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At what temperature does all nutrition dissolve in water? I want to help people that can't eat solid food, by giving them liquefied food.

Cascabel
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rakesh
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    This question is too broad; there are many nutrients, some water soluble, some not. Can you narrow the focus? – SAJ14SAJ Aug 30 '13 at 13:01
  • @SAJ14SAJ I think it's still possible to provide a general answer. I tried; please do contribute/edit if you'd like. – Cascabel Aug 30 '13 at 20:31
  • In that case, pureeing with a blender or immersion blender is probably as key to the actual goal as is the tendency of various nutrients to dissolve. – SAJ14SAJ Aug 30 '13 at 20:47
  • Consider also that some vitamins are destroyed by heat (eg, C, pantothenic acid, folate). – Carey Gregory Aug 31 '13 at 16:21

1 Answers1

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It's not about temperature; it's about the type of nutrient, and sometimes a combination of temperature and time.

So if it's sugar, you're basically done - a little bit of heating and stirring is all it'll take. Starches take time, not just temperature. Imagine trying to dissolve rice into water - you'll have to boil it until it's not just cooked but mush. The fiber which is soluble will behave similarly, I believe.

Proteins are pretty variable. Some, like whey protein, will readily dissolve. Others never will; good luck dissolving chicken, for example.

Fat, on the other hand, will never dissolve. But some of them will turn liquid, at which point they could be emulsified with the rest. (For example, cream has plenty of emulsified milkfat in it.)

But if all you're trying to do is create liquid food, what you should be trying to do is grind/blend things until smooth, not actually dissolve anything. With some effort, you can turn pretty much anything into a (maybe thick) liquid.

The other main approach would be to buy powdered forms of the soluble nutrients to use as ingredients (like the whey protein I mentioned) but I would caution you that unless you really know what you're doing (talk to a nutritionist!), it'll be really, really easy to make something nutritionally incomplete like that.

Cascabel
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