The chemistry and ethics of food
When it comes to creating a recipe, one can think of it as a science experiment. You have different variables and are testing to look for the desired outcome. When creating a recipe, there are two ways to test the food: qualitative and quantitative. Both are essential to creating an experiment to test food.
Qualitative is looking and qualities about the food such as taste and color. A qualitative test typically looks likes a blind taste test. The best way to do this is come up with specific questions about the desired variable you are testing and ask them to participants who have tried your food. By doing this you are getting a sense of the quality of your food. Typically, when it comes to cooking, this is the most common test done. Taste testing can provide a helpful tool to the cook. The most important part of doing a qualitative test like this is to make sure that you are asking a clear and specific question to your participants. This will help to get clear and concise data.
Quantitative tests are used less when it comes to food but can still be very useful. These are tests that look at specific parts of the food by doing tests that give results in a numerical form. An example of this is to find how firm something is by testing how much weight is put on it or testing the thickness of a sauce by how fast it moves. This gives clear numerical data that can help a cook perfect a recipe. In order to create a good quantitative test there one crucial thing to keep in mind. The test needs to be consistent. As in any science experiment, it is crucial in this kind of test to keep things the same throughout the test to get the most accurate results. Consistency will help to let you know what is actually affecting the recipe.
Science and cooking are one in the same because cooking is just a type of science. Everything that happens in the kitchen can be explained through chemistry. Baking bread, cooking meat, making cheese, it all comes down to chemistry. Even the process of making food is very similar to that in a lab setting. There are specific ingredients that react with one another in specific quantities. They are mixed and heated at certain temperatures and all with the hopes of creating a delicious final result. Data is collected based on taste and texture. One could compare a lab to a kitchen though kitchens are probably a little messier.
There are some differences between the two though and I think the key one is that food is less specific. When in a chemistry lab, precision is key to any experiment. We care about finding an end result and being able to explain that with our data. With cooking though, most of the time a dash of this and a pinch of that is added to food. We don’t think about it in the want for a certain end result. We care more about the end taste. Because of this the two are usually not thought to be the same but if you look hard are both, the similarities overweigh the differences.
Qualitative is looking and qualities about the food such as taste and color. A qualitative test typically looks likes a blind taste test. The best way to do this is come up with specific questions about the desired variable you are testing and ask them to participants who have tried your food. By doing this you are getting a sense of the quality of your food. Typically, when it comes to cooking, this is the most common test done. Taste testing can provide a helpful tool to the cook. The most important part of doing a qualitative test like this is to make sure that you are asking a clear and specific question to your participants. This will help to get clear and concise data.
Quantitative tests are used less when it comes to food but can still be very useful. These are tests that look at specific parts of the food by doing tests that give results in a numerical form. An example of this is to find how firm something is by testing how much weight is put on it or testing the thickness of a sauce by how fast it moves. This gives clear numerical data that can help a cook perfect a recipe. In order to create a good quantitative test there one crucial thing to keep in mind. The test needs to be consistent. As in any science experiment, it is crucial in this kind of test to keep things the same throughout the test to get the most accurate results. Consistency will help to let you know what is actually affecting the recipe.
Science and cooking are one in the same because cooking is just a type of science. Everything that happens in the kitchen can be explained through chemistry. Baking bread, cooking meat, making cheese, it all comes down to chemistry. Even the process of making food is very similar to that in a lab setting. There are specific ingredients that react with one another in specific quantities. They are mixed and heated at certain temperatures and all with the hopes of creating a delicious final result. Data is collected based on taste and texture. One could compare a lab to a kitchen though kitchens are probably a little messier.
There are some differences between the two though and I think the key one is that food is less specific. When in a chemistry lab, precision is key to any experiment. We care about finding an end result and being able to explain that with our data. With cooking though, most of the time a dash of this and a pinch of that is added to food. We don’t think about it in the want for a certain end result. We care more about the end taste. Because of this the two are usually not thought to be the same but if you look hard are both, the similarities overweigh the differences.
Water Quality in the animas river watershed
In the Animas Water Quality project, students were expected to create a prototype of an exhibit for the new Santa Rita Water Reclamation Center museum to explain an idea around water quality. Through this project, students learned how water quality issues in their local community and had the opportunity to create a real-world exhibit with the possibility of being made into permanent part of a museum.
Through the course of this project, I was able to learn new information regarding water quality in the watershed where I live. Although I have done a few projects on similar topics, this project allowed me to explore different types of pollutions that I did not know where issues. I believe one of the most interesting pieces of information I learned was about pharmaceuticals. Before this project, I was unaware that pharmaceuticals were a problem with water quality because I did not understand how they got into waterways. I now know that they are excreted from humans and thus end up in the sewers. What I found interesting form this is that most water reclamation centers don’t treat for pharmaceuticals, meaning they are discharged into rivers without any cleaning. Because of this, there have been major health effects on fish downstream of wasteways. This was my biggest learning because I did not know this was happening before the project. It peaked my interest because nothing is being done about it which I found curious. My learning through this project explored new ideas and concepts.
A new skill I acquired through this project was flexibility. In the beginning of the project, my group had a big idea of 3D printing a map and installing lights ourselves. We had to learn through the process of what was and wasn’t attainable for our skill sets. I think for me this skill is something very useful to learn because projects don’t always go the way we plan. Learning to roll with the punches and create new ideas is a skill I’m always working on and did in this project. Flexibility also was useful for this project because it made our end product much better. I believe with the time we were given, our first idea would not have turned out as expected. I think by creating new ideas and refining our first idea, we were able to create a project we were proud of. Therefore, flexibility is a skill I will continue to work on but feel I exercised it well in this project.
Water quality is a deeply important subject for everyone to learn about because it affects us in so many ways. Water is the essence of life, along with oxygen. We need it to survive. I think because of this it is important for us to care about the quality of the liquid that gives us so much. I believe it is also important to learn the parts that go into water quality because there are so many different pollutants that most people don’t even know about. I, for example, did not know pharmaceutical pollutions was even a concern, but this pollutant could cause serious health effects. I had no idea before researching it. Because of this, I believe it’s important to be educated on the water we drink and use every day. We would willingly eat something that we know will make us sick, therefore, we shouldn’t drink water that we don’t anything about. Water is too important not to care about the quality of it.
A new skill I acquired through this project was flexibility. In the beginning of the project, my group had a big idea of 3D printing a map and installing lights ourselves. We had to learn through the process of what was and wasn’t attainable for our skill sets. I think for me this skill is something very useful to learn because projects don’t always go the way we plan. Learning to roll with the punches and create new ideas is a skill I’m always working on and did in this project. Flexibility also was useful for this project because it made our end product much better. I believe with the time we were given, our first idea would not have turned out as expected. I think by creating new ideas and refining our first idea, we were able to create a project we were proud of. Therefore, flexibility is a skill I will continue to work on but feel I exercised it well in this project.
Water quality is a deeply important subject for everyone to learn about because it affects us in so many ways. Water is the essence of life, along with oxygen. We need it to survive. I think because of this it is important for us to care about the quality of the liquid that gives us so much. I believe it is also important to learn the parts that go into water quality because there are so many different pollutants that most people don’t even know about. I, for example, did not know pharmaceutical pollutions was even a concern, but this pollutant could cause serious health effects. I had no idea before researching it. Because of this, I believe it’s important to be educated on the water we drink and use every day. We would willingly eat something that we know will make us sick, therefore, we shouldn’t drink water that we don’t anything about. Water is too important not to care about the quality of it.