What exactly is jello made from?

add a fourth ingredient, which is water. The gelatin and jello is what lets you transform it into all sorts of different shapes. What exactly is gelatin? Gelatine is just a processed version of a structural protein called collagen that is found in many animals, including humans. Collagen actually makes up almost a third of all the protein in the human body. It's a big fibrous molecule that makes skin, bones,

and tendons both strong and somewhat flexible. As you get older, your body makes less collagen, and individual collagen fibers become cross linked with each other. You might experience this as stiff joints from less flexible tendons, or wrinkles from the loss of skin elasticity. The gelatin you eat in jello comes from the collagen in cow or pig bones, hoofs,

and connective tissues. To make gelatin, manufacturers grind up these various parts and pre treat them with either a strong acid or a strong base to break down the cellular structures and release proteins like collagen. After pre treatment, the resulting mixtures boiled. During this process, the large collagen protein ends up being partially broken down, and the resulting product is called gelatin. The gelatin is easily extracted because it forms a layer on the surface of the boiling mixture.

Gelatin is a common ingredient and foods because it's really versatile. It can be used as a jelling agent as in jello, as a thickener, as an emulsifier, and as a stabilizer. You'll find it in a variety of foods, from yogurt to chewing gum. Here's some of the foods that commonly contain gelatin. There's gummy bears, sour cream, cream, cheese, cake, icing and frosting, marshmallows, soup, sauces and gravies, canned hams,

and chicken. The list goes on and on. Gelatine is even used to make the coating for pills that makes them easier to swallow. It's also in cosmetics, lozenges, and ointments. When you buy a box of jello or another brand of gelatine at the grocery store, you get a small packet of powdered gelatin with artificial flavorings and colors. At room temperature. The gelatin protein is in the form of a triple helix. This is a fairly ordered structure, not unlike that of d NA. With DNA, two chains of

nucleotides are twisted together in a spiral pattern. In a gelatine protein, there are three separate chains of amino acids also known as polypeptide chains, that have lined up and twisted around each other, and the helix is held together by weak bonds that form between the amino acids that end up on the inside of that coiled structure. To make a gelatine mold, you have to add boiling water to the powdered gelatin. Then you stir the mixture for

about three minutes until the gelatine dissolves completely. What happens to the gelatine when you add the boiling water the energy of the heated water is enough to break up the weak bonds holding the gelatin strands together. The helical structure falls apart, and your left with free polypeptide chains floating around in a water solution. The next step is to add cold water and stick the dissolved gelatin in

the refrigerator to chill for several hours. When you cool down the mixture, those polypeptide chains begin to reattach and reform the tight triple helix structure. However, the chilling process is slow and the individual strands have been widely dispersed by mixing, so the helixes aren't perfectly formed this time. In some places there are gaps in the helix, and in others there's just a tangled web of polypeptide chains. When the gelatine solution is chilled, water gets trapped inside

these gaps and pockets between the chains. The protein net that's left after chilling gives the gelatine molded shape, and the trapped water provides the characteristic jiggle that makes jello a popular food for kids to eat. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is that how stuff works. Dot com and don't forget to check out the brain Stuff blog on the house stuff works dot Com home page. You can also follow brain Stuff on Facebook or Twitter at brain stuff HSW