Have you ever kept a piece of bread in your mouth for a very long time? If you have, you know that the bread gets sweeter the longer it is in your mouth. The reason this happens is because your body is digesting the bread even before you swallow it. The starch molecules in bread are actually made up of long chains of glucose, a simple sugar. An enzyme in your saliva called amylase is able to break apart the starch molecules into glucose. Unlike with the starch, your tongue perceives glucose as sweet. Cool, huh?
For those of you who like to look at cool pictures of enzymes, this is what amylase looks like.
If you'd like to learn more about this experiment: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/kitchenscience/exp/white-bread-and-the-wonder-of-enzymes/
Super super cool.
ReplyDelete