THE STORY BEGIN…
This was a story about how the S&S Miracle Solution was found. It started on one sunny day in September 2009, where after 3 stooges found that their body fat percentage were in tend to high level.
They started to think of better healthy cooking way. By using healthy cooking techniques, we could cut fat and calories (Mayo Clinic 2009). The first way that flashed in their mind was boiling. However, after few days practising this healthy cooking way, they found that the colour pigments in vegetables were leached into the boiling water, especially when boiling red spinach, and in the end they just take in lower amounts of vitamins and antioxidants. One of the stooges told her mum about the problem and her mum asked her to put in 1:1 ratio of salt and sugar into the boiling water which believes can prevent the loose of colour pigments. 3 of the stooges then designed a simple and easy experiment at home to authenticate the function of 1:1 ratio of salt and sugar solution in preventing leaching of colour pigments.
EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN…
1. 1. The red spinach was soaked and cleaned to remove any dirt and sand.
FIGURE 1: Washing
2. 2. The wok was filled with purified water until half filled.
3. 3. 1 tea spoon of salt and 1 tea spoon of sugar were added into the water and brought to boil.
FIGURE 2: Put in 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of sugar
4. 4. The cleaned red spinach was put into the boiling water and boiled for 2 minutes. [Boiling by putting food into boiling liquid and cook could retained as much colour as possible and reduced enzymic action that destroys vitamin C. (cookeryonline.com n.d.)]
FIGURE 3: Put in red spinach
5. 5.Steps 1 to 5 were repeated for plain water, salt solution and sugar solution.
6. 6. The colours of blanching waters were then compared.
RESULT…
FIGURE 4: Boiling water of sugar + salt (left), sugar (middle) and plain (right)
FIGURE 5: Boiling water of salt (left) and salt + sugar (right)
THE TRUTH BEHIND…
Good nutrition was not just a matter of eating the “right” foods. It was also important to prepare the foods in ways that could retain the foods flavour, colour and nutrients. (Joann Prophet 2002)
Red spinach contained anthocyanins which contribute to its red colour (Prior et al. 1998) and enzymes called glycosidases and polyphenoloxidase.
Anthocyanin was itself an acid (Wheldale n.d.) and was water-soluble.
Boiling was a simple and quick way to cook food. However, during boiling some of the valuable colour pigments (vitamins and antioxidants) would leach into the boiling water.
Boiling raw spinach for up to 15 minutes might affect the phenolic content (anthocyanins) in raw spinach (I. Amin et al. 2006).
Upon boiling, the anthocyanins would leach into the boiling water.
We found that addition of salt and sugar would not help in preventing the loose of anthocyanins from the red spinach a.k.a Amaranthus gangeticus.
The different in the colour intensity of blanching water was due to the degradation of anthocyanins (Yiu n.d.).
Anthocyanins stability was affected by pH.
Effect of pH
The equilibrium was driven to the left as the pH was decreased and to the right as pH was increased. (Stavin n.d.)
DuDuring boiling, ascorbic acid would leach into the boiling water (Gupta et al. 2008), which caused increased in the acidity of the boiling water.
In the present of sugar only, the colour intensity of boiling water was high because sugar can stabilized anthocyanins.
For the salt solution, the acidity of the boiling water was influenced by the present of NaCl.
It has been reported that increasing ionic strength of a solution, which means adding of NaCl, had a possible catalytic impact on ascorbic acid oxidation. (Assiry et al. 2006)
The catalytic impact on ascorbic acid oxidation would cause the pH of the boiling water to become higher and thus caused the anthocyinins to change to its colourless form.
The adding of salt into sugar solution will make the solution become more alkaline.
This was because the Cl ion can replace the hydroxyl group from the sugar molecule with the chemical reaction as followed:
NaCl + OH-R <-> Cl-R + NaOH (Chou 2000)
This reaction was similar with the formation of amino sugar where the hydroxyl group of sugar molecule was replaced by amino group (Zamora 2005).
The more alkaline of salt and sugar solution result in the least colour intensity of anthocyanins.
CONCLUSION…
We must not just believe on what we had seen or heard, but we got to validate by ourselves. Although our experimental result was not compatible with the objective, we still gained extra knowledge on the chemical reactions of anthocyanins. Now, we declared that the 1:1 ratio of salt and sugar solution cannot help in reducing the loose of colour pigments. We found that the best way of blanching vegetable was by steaming although steaming took longer time than boiling.
REFERENCES…
AlHussein M. Assiry, Sudhir K. Sastry, Chaminda P. Samaranayake, 2006. Influence of temperature, electrical conductivity, power and pH on ascorbic acid degradation kinetics during ohmic heating using stainless steel electrodes. Journal of Biochemistry, 68, 7-13.Amin, I., Norazaidah, Y., and Emmy Hainida, K.I., 2006. Antioxidant activity and phenolic content of raw and blanched Amaranthus species. Journal of Food Chemistry, 94, 47-52
Chou, C.C., 2000, Hand book of sugar refining: A manual for design and operation of sugar [Online]. Available from: <http://books.google.com.my/books?id=LacV6eM2NXMC&pg=PA136&lpg=PA136&dq=reaction+of+NaCl+and+sugar&source=bl&ots=q-AgyLNbS3&sig=4EelhlhG_2B4hl-GIm4nuqfvU0A&hl=en&ei=CaftSruAL8XakAWEp5iaDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=11&ved=0CDMQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&q=reaction%20of%20NaCl%20and%20sugar&f=false> [Accessed 23 October 2009]
cookeryonline.com, n.d., Boiling [Online]. Available from:<>
Gupta, S., Lakshmi A, J., and Prakash, J., 2008. Effect of different blanching temperature on ascorbic acid retention in green leafy vegetables. Available from: < http://nopr.niscair.res.in/bitstream/123456789/5653/1/NPR%207(2)%20111-116.pdf>
Joann Prophet, 2002, Healthy cooking [Online]. Available from:
< http://www.pioneerthinking.com/healthycooking.html> [Accessed 23 September 2009]
Mayo Clinic, 2009. Nutrition and healthy eating [Online].
Available from: <http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/healthy-cooking/NU00201> [Accessed 23rd September 2009]
Prior, R.L., Cao, G., Martin A., Sofic E., McEwen, J.,0_Brien, C., et al. 1998. Antioxidant capacity as influenced by total phenolic and anthocyanin content, maturity, and variety of Vaccinium species. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 46, 2686-2693.
Stavin, n.d., Chemistry [Online]. Available from: < http://www.micro-ox.com/chem_antho.htm >
Wheldale, O., n.d., The anthocyanins pigments of plants [Online]. Available from: < id="Yng4-wT8R7IC&pg=" lpg="PA53&dq=" source="bl&ots=" sig="5MCC49Z1CU4e3iyahOXwPC2uA6I&hl=" ei="08DhSoSGN6jg6gPW87HgAQ&sa=" oi="book_result&ct=" resnum="8&ved=" v="onepage&q=" f="false">
Yiu, H.H.,n.d., Hand book of food science, technology and engineering [Online]. Available from:< id="weXKKo7u8ugC&pg=" lpg="PT306&dq=" source="bl&ots=" sig="tDkKQ83zmEb2xdyQe_96k5_EZ54&hl=" ei="WeLhSsu3CIqQ6APFzp3qAQ&sa=" oi="book_result&ct=" resnum="1&ved=" v="onepage&q=" f="false">
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