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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Rosehip Syrup Question

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  • From: Melissa Kacalanos <mijwiz@yahoo.com>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Rosehip Syrup Question
  • Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 08:11:19 -0700 (PDT)

I don't know how hot syrup gets, but I do know that vitamin C isn't destroyed by regular boiling water temperature at least. I was assigned a really cool experiment in a college lab proving this. To summarize:

1. We measured the vitamin C content of raw cabbage, and it was pretty high.
2. We put raw cabbage in cold water and brought it to a boil, boiled it for a little while, then measured the vitamin C content of both the cabbage and the water, and they were both awfully low. So the heat destroyed the vitamins, right? But wait!
3. We boiled some water, then added some cabbage, and brought it back to a boil almost immediately. We boiled it for a while, then measured the vitamin C content of the water and cabbage, and guess what? There was almost as much C as there had been in the raw cabbage.

Why? A cell contains all sorts of different chemicals, including vitamins and enzymes. When the cell is alive, they're all safely stored in separate containers. That's a good thing, because if these enzymes got loose inside the cell, they'd wreak havoc on everything, including vitamins. Enzymes are powerful machines. When you slowly warm up a cell, the containers break down, the various enzymes get loose, and they wind up destroying lots of things, including vitamins.

But by very quickly bringing the cabbage to a boil, no sooner are the enzymes released than they themselves are destroyed by heat, so they have hardly any time to do their damage.

I don't know how rose hip syrup is made, but it should at least be possible for it to have a lot of vitamin C, I think.

Melissa

Ernest Plutko <ernestplutko@wiktel.com> wrote:
Vitamin C is destroyed by heat. Has anyone tested rose hip syrup for
Vitamin C content?





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