Enzymes Essay; Enzymes used in the Baby Food industry

The enzymes which are used in baby food are there because they allow the food to be pre-digested in the baby’s stomach. This is because the baby’s digestive system is not strong enough to break down the large molecules of proteins in regular food. This also helps as it lets the large protein molecules to partly break down into amino acids.

Enzymes are known to be biological catalysts; these enzymes consist of various types of proteins that work to drive the chemical reaction for a specific action or nutrient.

The main two enzymes used in the baby food industry are ‘protease’ and ‘lipases’. A protease enzyme is usually used to break down protein it does this when it breaks peptide bonds by a process called hydrolosis. These bonds are linked together to create an amino acid. The best condition for use of protease is in acidic areas. Finally the proteases occur naturally in all organisms. A lipase is a water-soluble enzyme that catalyzes the hydrolysis of ester bonds in water–insoluble, lipid substrates.

Due to the many different enzymes it is hard for scientists to pick the right type. This is because to find a major enzyme it is needed to be first picked from the right source and also it requires highly expensive equipment to extract the right enzyme. To make it possible for the ‘fragmentation’ process to occur scientists have invented new ways to collect enzymes befor the can wash away, they do this by putting in tiny pores inside the major structure so the enzyme can be collected.

A protease in another industry is not used as it creates a higher mortality rate in the medicine industry for HIV/Aids. This enzyme has therefore been made into an alternate structure but with the same properties but not with the same processes. This in turn creates a social factor to be seen when treating the disease so the scientists have made a new type of ingredient called NNRTI to serve the same purpose as the protease enzyme.