WAKE up, smell the coffee and enjoy the aroma for longer.
Research sponsored by Nestlé is homing in on the reactive molecules called radicals that degrade freshly brewed coffee’s smell over time.
The company enlisted the help of supercomputers at IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland to calculate how susceptible the fragrant molecules are to attack by radicals, and which radicals are the most aggressive. Hydroxyl radicals, made up of one oxygen atom plus one hydrogen, did the most damage to 24 coffee-smelling compounds (Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, DOI: 10.1021/jf0261607). Because hydroxyl is very reactive, it steals a hydrogen atom from an aroma molecule,…
