Food Science
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This is an answer I saw for a question on why we should use lemon juice or HCl to protect vitamin C: any acid should help to “protect” the vitamin C. This is because vitamin C is itself a weak acid, known as ascorbic acid. At a pH higher than 7, vitamin C undergoes a neutralisation, followed immediately by a rapid degradation.
So if ascorbic acid is neutralised, what base is it reacting with and what salt is formed? Also, would the salt formed be the 'rapid degradation' of vitamin C? 260308
Corrie writes
As you may know vitamin C has a ring structure:
Vitamin C is readily oxidised, even by oxygen from the air in the presence of an enzyme, to dehydroascorbic acid:
This oxidation is reversible. However, dehydro- ascorbic acid is unstable in alkaline solution and undergoes a hydrolysis reaction (by OH-) in which the ester link ( O=C-O) in the ring is broken.
This is leads to the degradation of the vitamin C.
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updated: 28 March 2008
