Atiq's+essay

Soy sauce.... I like to eat rice with soy sauce. It makes my rice more delicious. I never thought that soy sauce have many benefit. Soy sauce is a dark brown liquid obtained from a fermented mixture of soybeans and wheat that has gained popularity worldwide. With a salty taste and sharp savoury flavour, it has served as an all purpose seasoning. In general, there are two fermentation stages involved in the production of soy sauce. The first stage is aerobic fermentation, which uses fungi to break down the polysaccharides into simple sugars. The second stage is an anaerobic salt mash, where the mixture undergoes LAB and yeast (//Zygosaccharomyces rouxii//) fermentation. The chemical composition of soy sauce varies with the raw materials used. In general, good quality soy sauce contains 1.0 to 1.65% total nitrogen (w/v), 2 to 5% reducing sugars, 1 to 2% organic acids, 2.0 to 2.5% ethanol, and 17 to 19% sodium chloride (w/v). About 45% of the total nitrogen consists if simple peptides, whereas 45% is in the form of amino acids. Based on the manufacturing methods and raw materials used, there are three general types of soy sauce produced, fermentation soy sauce, formulated soy sauce, and variety soy sauce. ‘Fermentation soy sauce” is the main category of soy sauce products, manufactured through natural or controlled fermentation of raw materials, while ‘formulated soy sauce’ is a mixture of fermentation soy sauce (at least 50%) and the liquid acid-hydrolysate of plant proteins (no more than 50%). As the production time for the formulated soy sauce is much shorter, it has a lower cost than the fermented product. However, its flavour and nutritional value are inferior to the fermentation soy sauce. “Variety soy sauce” is a fermentation- based soy sauce with certain non-traditional raw materials added. This has led to the development of a number of specially formulated products, and has become popular among gourmet consumers who desire special flavours or compounds from a variety of untraditional raw ingredients in soy sauce, such as black beans, hazelnuts, seaweed, mushrooms, shrimps, and selected herbal ingredients. In addition to its taste and aroma, soy sauce is also considered as a functional seasoning because it has been found to contain several bioactive components showing a range of biological activities, including anticarcinogenic, antimicrobial, antioxidative, antiplatelet, hypoallergenic, and antiallergic activities, and the inhibition of an angiotensin I-converting enzyme. These collective effects of soy sauce are thought to make it a healthy and beneficial food in the human diet. As a conclusion, people who don’t like to eat soy sauce may thinks again the benefits that can be obtained by eating soy sauce...^^