Digestion: Does Fresh Fruit Have More Protesases than Canne

Digestion is the breaking down of food into separate molecules for the body to use (Dickey, 1998). Protein is very important in the function of the body. It is broken down into amino acids, which go to different parts of the body. The enzymes that digest proteins are called proteases.

Gelatin is a protein made with animal hooves and hides. It is used to make a very common dessert known as “Jell-O”. However, if a certain chemical or if an enzyme digests it, then it will not harden. Some fruits also seem to have more protease than canned fruits.

In this experiment, different fruits were added to gelatin and observed to see if proteases were present in the designated fruit. We predicted that the fresh pineapple would keep the gelatin from solidifying, and the canned pineapple would allow the gelatin to harden.

Four test tube set-ups were made for this experiment. All of them contained 5 ml of gelatin. The first test tube contained 1 ml of distilled water, the second test tube contained 1 ml of distilled water also, the third contained .5 g of fresh pineapple and the forth one contained .5 g of canned pineapple. The mixture in each of the test tubes were stirred well and chilled in ice of 5 minutes. At the end of the 5 minutes, each of the test tubes were observed to see if the gelatin had solidified or not. If it showed that the gelain had solidified, that would tell us that little or no proteases were present in the designated fruit. If it was still liquid, we would conclude that the fruit observed had a sufficient amount of proteases present in order to digest the gelatin.

This experiment might be of benefit to all you girls that want to make your boyfriends happy. Here is something you should always remember: Never use fresh fruits when making Jello.

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