Food can spoil and go bad because of the growth of undesirable microorganisms. The pH-value impacts the flavour of your food, but it can also be very important for the shelf life of your food, how long it stays safe. What is the pH-value used for in food science? The list below does give some general guidelines ( source). A lot of factors influence the pH-value, amongst others the ripeness of produce. Since food products, especially fresh foods such as fruits and vegetables and meat, aren’t very constant in their properties, the exact pH-value will differ per individual item. Examples of pH-values in foodįoods have a wide spectrum of pH-values, although most of them are either around a value of 7 (thus neutral) or lower than seven. It is why you often see ranges for specific foods. One lemon may have a pH-value of 2.1 whereas another one might be 2.4. However, since foods are naturally quite diverse, there can be quite a lot of variation between similar foods. If you use a pH-meter you can get a specific value for the product you’re measuring, e.g. You can measure the pH-value of a food using a pH-meter or a special pH-measurement strip. As such, lemon juice is more acidic than yogurt. For example, lemon juice has a pH-value of 2-3 whereas that of yogurt is around 4-4.5. The further away from that neutral value of 7 the more acidic (or alkaline) a food is. Foods with a pH lower than 7 are acidic, those with a pH higher than 7 are alkaline. Any food that has a pH value of 7 is neutral. In determining what a food is you use the pH-scale. Whether or not something is acidic or alkaline is very well defined by chemists. A food that is neither acidic or alkaline is called neutral. The opposite of an acid food (or drink) is one that is alkaline. If you drink any of these, you taste the acidity. Lemon & lime juice, vinegar, yogurt and buttermilk are all acid foods. When is a food acidic?Īcidic foods are pretty common. In this post we’ll discuss the underlying science of these reaction types. Acid/base reactions all have a lot in common, even though their effect (a colour change, leavened cake or ‘cooked’ fish) may look very different. These types of reactions are just one of many chemical reactions that happen in food (another one would be browning of bananas). They are all examples of acid/base reactions.
What do all of these examples have in common? You can ‘cook’ fish by adding lemon and lime juice, this makes a ceviche. Baking powder causes your cake to rise beautifully in the oven. Red cabbage juice changes colour when you add a squirt of lime juice or a spoonful of baking soda.
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