Carla Mooney - The Chemistry of Food

460370 BCE: Democritus of Ancient Greece introduces the idea of matter in the form of particles, which he calls atoms. He proposes that all matter is made of these tiny units.

300 BCE: Aristotle of Ancient Greece declares that there are only four elements: fire, air, water, and earth. He believes that all matter is made from these four elements.

1000s: Ancient Egyptians extract flavors and scents from plants in the form of essential oils.

1787: Antoine Laurent Lavoisier publishes his system for classifying and naming chemical substances. He is later known as the father of chemistry.

1851: The first artificially flavored candy is displayed in the chemistry section of the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace in London, England.

1869: Dmitri Mendeleev publishes the first modern periodic table to classify elements. The table allows scientists to predict the properties of undiscovered elements.

1898: J.J. Thomson discovers the electron.

1906: U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt signs the Pure Food and Drug Act into law, making it illegal to produce, sell, or transport food or drugs that are poisonous or mislabeled. All imitation flavors in food must be labeled.

1908: The flavor umami is first identified by Kikunae Ikeda, a professor of the Tokyo Imperial University.

1911: Ernest Rutherford, Hans Geiger, and Ernest Marsden prove the nuclear model of the atom, which has a small, dense, positively charged nucleus surrounded by an electron cloud.

1913: Niels Bohr proposes the Bohr atomic model. His model shows electrons traveling in orbits around an atoms nucleus. Bohr believes that an atoms chemical properties are determined by how many electrons are in its outer orbits.

1933: Milk is first fortified with Vitamin D.

1934: Citric acid is first added to food during processing.

1939: Linus Pauling publishes his work on chemical bonds.

1939: Ascorbic acid is added to processed foods to prevent browning and rancidity.

1950s: The first flavored potato chips are invented by the Irish company Tayto.

1972: High-fructose corn syrup, an artificial sugar made from corn syrup, is developed.

1974: The artificial sweetener aspartame is developed.

1976: The first microwavable frozen food products are introduced.
1976: The McCormick company identifies more of the many individual chemical flavor components of vanilla and uses that information to create its own artificial vanilla.

1986: Genetically engineered enzymes, proteins, and yeasts are developed.

1990: A team of researchers at MSG-maker Ajinomoto finds a compound in garlic that enhances sweetness, saltiness, and umami. The scientists call this effect a sixth taste: kokumi.

1996: Carbon dioxide (CO2) is added to dairy products to improve their quality and shelf-life.

2015: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules that artificial trans fats are unsafe to eat and gives foodmakers three years to eliminate them from the food supply.

2019: Researchers at Northeastern University work to identify and track more than 26,000 distinct biochemicals in food to understand better what people eat and how food affects health and disease.