Tag Archives: hydrogen
Sugar Molecule Painting
Painting number 5 of the 50 Paintings for 2012 goal, now available as a standard greeting card or museum-quality fine art print– rolled, under glass or on canvas.
“Sugar Molecule” is the second of a series of mouthwatering paintings depicting the building blocks of favorite foods and flavors. The molecule depicted is sucrose, or table sugar, a combination of glucose and fructose. Sugars are made from carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen.
Sucrose is the organic compound commonly known as table sugar and sometimes called saccharose. A white, odorless, crystalline powder with a sweet taste, it is best known for its role in human nutrition. About 150,000,000 tonnes are produced annually.
Refined sugar was originally a luxury, but it eventually became sufficiently cheap and common enough to influence standard cuisine. Britain, the United States and the Caribbean islands have cuisines where the use of sugar became particularly prominent.
Sucrose forms a major element in confectionery and desserts. Cooks use it for sweetening — its fructose component, which has almost double the sweetness of glucose, makes sucrose distinctively sweet in comparison to other carbohydrate foods. It can also act as a food preservative when used in sufficient concentrations. Sucrose is important to the structure of many foods, including biscuits and cookies, cakes and pies, candy, and ice cream and sorbets. It is a common ingredient in many processed and so-called “junk foods.”
Table sugar (sucrose) comes from plant sources. Two important sugar crops predominate: sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) and sugar beets (Beta vulgaris), in which sugar can account for 12% to 20% of the plant’s dry weight. Minor commercial sugar crops include the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera), sorghum (Sorghum vulgare), and the sugar maple (Acer saccharum). In fiscal year 2001/2002, worldwide production of sugar amounted to 133.9 million tonnes. Sucrose is obtained by extraction of these crops with hot water, concentration of the extract gives syrups, from which solid sucrose can be crystallized.
The first production of sugar from sugarcane took place in India. Alexander the Great’s companions reported seeing “honey produced without the intervention of bees,” and it remained exotic in Europe until the Arabs started producing it in Sicily and Spain. Only after the Crusades did it begin to rival honey as a sweetener in Europe. The Spanish began cultivating sugarcane in the West Indies in 1506 (and in Cuba in 1523). The Portuguese first cultivated sugarcane in Brazil in 1532.
(Visit Wikipedia for the complete original article on Sugar.)
Caffeine Molecule Painting
Painting number 4 of the 50 Paintings for 2012 goal, now available as a standard greeting card or museum-quality fine art print– rolled, under glass or on canvas.
“Caffeine Molecule” is the first of a series of mouthwatering paintings depicting the building blocks of favorite foods and flavors. Caffeine is made from carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen.
Caffeine is a bitter, white crystalline xanthine alkaloid that acts as a stimulant drug. It is found in varying quantities in the seeds, leaves, and fruit of some plants, where it acts as a natural pesticide that paralyzes and kills certain insects feeding on the plants. It is most commonly consumed by humans in infusions extracted from the bean of the coffee plant and the leaves of the tea bush, as well as from various foods and drinks containing products derived from the kola nut. Other sources include yerba maté, guarana berries, guayusa, and the yaupon holly.
In humans, caffeine acts as a central nervous system stimulant, temporarily warding off drowsiness and restoring alertness. It is the world’s most widely consumed psychoactive drug, but, unlike many other psychoactive substances, it is both legal and unregulated in nearly all parts of the world. Beverages containing caffeine, such as coffee, tea, soft drinks, and energy drinks, enjoy great popularity; in North America, 90% of adults consume caffeine daily.
Global consumption of caffeine has been estimated at 120,000 tonnes per year, making it the world’s most popular psychoactive substance. This amounts to one serving of a caffeinated beverage for every person every day.
Common sources of caffeine are coffee, tea, and (to a lesser extent) chocolate derived from cocoa beans. Less commonly used sources of caffeine include the yerba maté, guarana and ilex guayusa plants, which are sometimes used in the preparation of teas and energy drinks. Two of caffeine’s alternative names, mateine and guaranine, are derived from the names of these plants.
One of the world’s primary sources of caffeine is the coffee “bean” (which is the seed of the coffee plant), from which coffee is brewed. Caffeine content in coffee varies widely depending on the type of coffee bean and the method of preparation used; even beans within a given bush can show variations in concentration. In general, one serving of coffee ranges from 80–100 milligrams, for a single shot (30 milliliters) of arabica-variety espresso, to approximately 100–125 milligrams for a cup (120 milliliters) of drip coffee. Arabica coffee typically contains half the caffeine of the robusta variety.
In general, dark-roast coffee has very slightly less caffeine than lighter roasts because the roasting process reduces a small amount of the bean’s caffeine content.
Tea is another common source of caffeine. Although tea contains more caffeine than coffee (by dry weight), a typical serving contains much less, as tea is normally brewed much weaker. Besides strength of the brew, growing conditions, processing techniques and other variables also affect caffeine content. Certain types of tea may contain somewhat more caffeine than other teas.
Tea contains small amounts of theobromine and slightly higher levels of theophylline than coffee. Preparation and many other factors have a significant impact on tea, and color is a very poor indicator of caffeine content. Teas like the pale Japanese green tea, gyokuro, for example, contain far more caffeine than much darker teas like lapsang souchong, which has very little.
Caffeine is also a common ingredient of soft drinks, such as cola, originally prepared from kola nuts. Soft drinks typically contain about 10 to 50 milligrams of caffeine per serving. By contrast, energy drinks, such as Red Bull, can start at 80 milligrams of caffeine per serving. The caffeine in these drinks either originates from the ingredients used or is an additive derived from the product of decaffeination or from chemical synthesis. Guarana, a prime ingredient of energy drinks, contains large amounts of caffeine with small amounts of theobromine and theophylline in a naturally occurring slow-release excipient.
Chocolate derived from cocoa beans contains a small amount of caffeine. The weak stimulant effect of chocolate may be due to a combination of theobromine and theophylline, as well as caffeine. A typical 28-gram serving of a milk chocolate bar has about as much caffeine as a cup of decaffeinated coffee, although some dark chocolate currently in production contains as much as 160 mg per 100g.
(Visit Wikipedia for the complete original article on Caffeine.)