BS BIOLOGY 1C
NATA DE COCO
Composed of Bacterial Cellulose and
a product of Bacterial fermentation
Hello everyone! This is my first blog about FOOD MICROBIOLOGY. Well, I’m just curious about the process behind NATA DE COCO. It is one of the highly sold food products in different market place around the world. I went curious about it because I have this feeling that whenever I ate NATA DE COCO, it’s kind of soft but a little bit hard to chew. So, that is why I am writing this blog to share what I found out.
First, you might not believe me but according to my research, NATA DE COCO is a product of bacterial fermentation. To be specific, it is the fermentation culture of Gluconacetobacter xylinum (formerly known as Acetobacter xylinum) in coconut water medium (or mixed in coconut water) enriched with carbon and nitrogen through a controlled process. Imagine! It comes from live bacteria! Oh My!
Another thing that I found out about its process is, after incubating the medium (Acetobacter xylinum in coconut water enriched with carbon and nitrogen) the bacteria produces enzymes that can make up a thousand sugar chain or CELLULOSE FIBERS/THREAD. But wait! What is cellulose? According to some source it is the most abundant polymer on earth and bacterial cellulose was used because of its appealing purity and highly crystalline nanostructure.
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AHA! That’s why all NATA DE COCO that I saw in the market place has a crystal like physical structure. It’s because of the cellulose produced by a certain bacteria.
The last thing that I found out is that, NATA DE COCO is composed of Gluconacetobacter bacteria that are involved in the process of creating nanofibers of cellulose. That is why NATA DE COCO is kind of soft but hard to chew. It is because of the cellulose structure.
WOAH!!! I can’t imagine that I ate bacteria whenever I ate NATA DE COCO.
But this blog is not made for you to ban on eating NATA DE COCO because it is composed of bacterial cellulose. I wrote this blog out of my curiosity on NATA DE COCO and I want to share to you what that there are two different kinds of bacteria: good and bad bacteria. Good bacteria are used to make food and help people adjust in some certain circumstances such as sickness or illness. Examples of good bacteria are Gluconacetobacter and some species of Lactobacillus genera. Bad bacteria are those who are responsible for some certain disease that causes people to be sick and die. Examples of bad bacteria are E. coli and Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
The bacteria present in NATA DE COCO (gluconacetobacter xylinum) are edible so you don’t need to worry about your health when you like to eat NATA DE COCO.
That’s all about my blog. I hope you enjoyed reading it and learn something from it.
See you to my next blog. Thank you and Goodbye, for now.