Essay On Yogurt

Introduction Though plenty of people regularly enjoy yogurt, the details of how yogurt is made isn’t often on the minds of consumers. Important basic biological functions can be explained via the creation of yogurt. Yogurt is milk that has been introduced to a probiotic and has undergone changes in chemical properties. These processes to create yogurt cause the liquid milk to thicken and produce a sweeter taste. Before discussing the current experiment we will review monosaccharides/disaccharides and cellular respiration. The food we consume is for a purpose - energy. Some foods are better than others at producing energy, while foods like monosaccharides and disaccharides are ‘sweeter’ or ‘taste better’ but aren’t as efficient. These are known as simple sugars. Monosaccharides are one molecule of simple sugar. They don’t need to be broken down to be energy and are found in foods like fruits, cane sugar, and beans. Alternatively disaccharides are two molecules of bonded monosaccharides. This means that they have broken down into energy adenosine triphosphate (ATP) but they are still simple sugars. Though you can often associate highly processed foods with disaccharides they are also found in milk.

This function happens in two ways (aerobic respiration) or without oxygen (anaerobic respiration). This summary will focus on anaerobic respiration within prokaryotic cells. The first step to cellular respiration is glycolysis. Glycolysis breaks down glucose which then forms pyruvate and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) or energy. Unlike aerobic respiration, in anaerobic respiration the next step is for the cell to undergo fermentation. Fermentation occurs in 2 ways, ethanol fermentation and lactate fermentation, which are both necessary for the steps following fermentation to produce ATP or energy (Audesirk & Audesirk,