Enzymes — Enzymes are natural ferments contained in the tea leaf. They posses most remarkable powers, for despite the fact that they exist in the most minute quantities, they can change many thousands of, times their own weight of the chemical substance upon which they act, without loss of power. Somehow or other they fit into the architecture of the molecules upon which they act on a lock and key principle and each enzyme acts as a key for one particular chemical structure ad infinitum. A simple illustration may be taken from sugars and starches. Starches are composed of molecules of simple sugars locked together. Depending on the way the simple sugars are locked together various different enzymes can unlock the particular structure they are designed by nature to fit. There is an enzyme in human saliva which unlock the starch in bread; chew a piece of unsweetened bread for a few minutes so that it becomes thoroughly mixed with saliva and it will be found that the mass slowly becomes sweet to thetaste because the complex starch molecules are becoming unlocked, setting free simple sugar molecules. Cut an apple or a potato and the cut surface which is exposed to air will rapidly turn brown in many varieties of apple and jsotato which contain polyphenols and enzymes very similar to those in tea leaf.
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