Food Preservation Experiment for Students
You’ve probably seen your parents going through the fridge, throwing out leftovers because they’ve gone bad. If they’ve been in the fridge for a really long time, you might have seen the food start to grow mold or shrivel. In this experiment, you’ll see the best way to preserve fruits and vegetables so they’ll stay good longer.
Question
What is the best way to preserve foods? How much money is saved by not wasting food?
Materials
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Green containers
- A lettuce keeper
- Green bags
- Ziploc bags
- Lettuce
- Some kind of small fruit like strawberries, blueberries, or raspberries
- Food preserving discs – Veggie Keeper and Extra Life Fruit are good names to look for
Procedure
- You can choose what three preserving containers you want to try out, but in this experiment, we’ll be using the lettuce keeper, Green bags, and a preserving disc.
- Pick out the food you are going to be trying to preserve. It is good to pick something with a low shelf life (or length of time they can sit and still be good). Strawberries, a soft fruit, are a good choice because they have a shorter shelf time.
- You’ll need to figure out how long your food can last without any kind of preservation method. Strawberries last 3 days in the refrigerator at the most.
- Measure out three equal amounts of strawberries and put them into a different container, then into the fridge. For a good amount, you can put 5 strawberries in each.
- Keep an eye on the strawberries and check on them each day to see if there is any difference.
- Write down the number of days it takes until the food goes bad. (Strawberries will get soggy and begin to grow white mold.)
- Make a chart and record your data. Here’s a good example:
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Strawberries - Average refrigerated life span = 3 days |
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Number of days to spoil: |
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Green Bags |
Lettuce Keeper |
Preserving Disc |
|
|
Strawberries |
7 |
8 |
6 |
|
Product A (optional) |
8 |
5 |
6 |
|
Product B (optional) |
6 |
8 |
8 |
|
Product C (optional) |
8 |
5 |
7 |
Results
You should have been able to come to a conclusion on which method preserved your food the longest. How will this benefit you in the future? Well, in just one year, America wastes about 350 billion pounds of food. The typical American family will waste about 14% of the food they buy, which is about $590 wasted a year, though this number can go up to an estimated $1350 every year. Most of this waste is because food has gone bad before it was eaten. Wasting food is bad for our money and bad for the environment. If you can do your part to help preserve the food your family buys, you’ll be throwing out less and saving money.
