Mix It Up! Food Scientist

In this lesson, students will model the responsibilities of a food scientist by working in product development teams to create a new food product. Tasks will involve market analysis, economics, food chemistry and safety, graphic design, and communication.

Grades: 6 – 8
Estimated Time: Five 50-minute class periods
Updated: January 31, 2024
Tags: Careers

food on table with clipboard and graphs — Image: metamorworks/iStock

Background

Materials Needed

For the teacher:

Project Grading Rubric

For the students:

Product Development Team Handouts
One base ingredient for trail mix such as cereals, nuts, pretzels, etc. Beware of food allergies when selecting ingredients.
Water
Small paper cups for taste testing
Plastic spoons
Labels
Waterproof markers
Refrigeration
Kitchen scale
Internet access
Taste Test Guidelines handout

Provide by groups based on interest:

Crackers, cereals, nuts, spices, chocolate, dried fruit, pretzels, etc
Resealable plastic bags or containers
Sterilized measuring cups, spoons, mixing bowls

Vocabulary

aroma: the smell or odor of something
texture: the feel, appearance, or consistency of a surface or substance

Background Agricultural Connections

This lesson is one out of four lessons designed for grades six through eight which promote the development of STEM abilities and critical thinking skills, while fostering an appreciation for the people involved in food production. The new curriculum includes inquiry-based labs, real life challenges for students to investigate and opportunities to plan and construct products and shipping models. Other lessons in this series include:

Mix it Up! Food Scientist
Cruisin' for a Bruisin' Food Packaging Specialist
Food Safety Sleuths: Food Safety Specialist

Food scientists study the physical characteristics, microbiology, and chemistry of the food we eat every day in order to develop and improve methods for preservation, quality control, nutrition, safety, sustainability, and convenience. Food scientists work in teams with colleagues who specialize in specific areas such as research, packaging, nutrition analysis, product safety, clinical trials, world hunger challenges, and more. Many opportunities exist for careers in food science. Even Disney and NASA employ food scientists!

Government organizations such as the Food and Drug Administration work with food scientists to ensure that food on grocery store shelves meets health codes and is safe to eat. Strict protocols are enforced for food testing, manufacturing, transportation, storage, and expiration dates.

The demand for food scientists is increasing in response to the challenge of providing safe, nutritious, and flavorful food for the world’s growing population. Many colleges offer food science programs that include courses in life science and physical science, food law, food microbiology, food processing and nutrition, foreign languages, communications, and more.

Lesson Activities

Engage

Bring an item to class, such as a box of cereal or sports drink and ask students for ideas on how an item like this can transform from an idea to a selection on our grocery store shelves. Is there a career area that develops new food products, determines the nutritional value of food, and identifies what consumers need and want for food products? Yes! It is the job of a Food Scientist.
In this lesson, students will:
- Create and refine a recipe for a new food product.
- Calculate the rates of profit for a new food product.
- Learn how to identify the needs and desires of consumers.
- Learn how to determine the nutritional value of recipes.

Explore and Explain

Introduce students to a day in the life of a food scientist by viewing a few of the videos found on the Institute of Food Technologists website. Begin by viewing the link, What is Food Science & Technology? Follow up by viewing videos from the YouTube playlist Day In The Life of a Food Scientist.
Another exciting example of developments in food science comes from a food scientist named Elizabeth Fenner who used micro- encapsulation to create a “flavor release” ice cream that starts out as vanilla at first taste then transforms into cherry before you swallow it. A short video clip may be viewed on online, The Next Generation of Ice Cream: One Bite, Two Flavors.
Tell students that, in this lesson they will act as food scientists working on a product development team to create a winning new trail mix. Each team member will specialize in a certain area such as marketing, food chemistry, graphic design, and cost analysis. Encourage students to feature crops from your home state in their recipes. At the end of the assignment teams will present their products to the class, and will finally eat their science experiments!
Organize students into teams of four and distribute the Product Development Team handouts. As a class, discuss the details of each task and the importance of communication between team members to meet the overall goal of creating a successful new product. Display the Project Grading Rubric for the class to see and discuss. Instruct any students with food allergies to notify the teacher of specific restrictions. Students in each team should share task responsibilities in order to provide all students with an opportunity to experience different aspects of product development.
Provide one class period for students to conduct research and design their plan of action. Before the end of class, the teacher should receive and approve an outline from each team showing a written timeline of steps to complete the project on time.
- For homework, each team should conduct a survey to identify favorite trail mix ingredients amongst their target audience. As a class, decide upon the appropriate number of people to survey. Teams may conduct the survey through social media, paper and pencil, or other appropriate methods.
- After the survey results are in, each team should gather the preferred ingredients and tools they will need to prepare three slightly different versions of the trail mix recipe and carry out a taste test the next day in class.
Prior to any food preparation, ensure that cooking areas, utensils, and cookware are sanitized and that students have washed their hands. Perishable food items should be properly stored in refrigerators.
Instruct teams to prepare 1⁄4 cup each of three slightly different trail mix variations for their initial team taste tests. Students should follow the taste test instructions provided on the Taste Test Guidelines handout. The trail mix recipe that receives the highest score in the team taste test will be used to develop the team's final trail mix recipe.
After establishing their final trail mix recipe, each team should complete all steps of production listed in the job descriptions for the product development team. Each team should produce one cup of their packaged trail mix product.
As a culmination, product development teams will present their product to the class by using a skit, video, radio broadcast, or other multimedia method.
Hold a taste-test party for students to sample trail mix recipes developed by other teams.

Variation

Allow students to create other products besides trail mix. Examples include dips, cookies, spreads, jams, etc.
Instruct students to conduct their taste test with a larger sample of people from their selected target group.
If a school kitchen is available, ice cream flavor product development offers many exciting possibilities.

ELL Adaptation

Place ELL students in groups with students who are proficient in English.
Instruct teams to create Spanish, or other language versions of labels and advertisements.

Elaborate

Include a requirement for teams to devise a QR code that links to a Web page ad for their product.
Have students research colleges that offer food science programs and summarize the different pathways of study and job opportunities.

Evaluate

After conducting these activities, review and summarize the following key concepts:

Food scientists work in many areas of food processing. They develop new food products, improve methods of food preservation, and study the nutrition and safety of foods.
Food scientists help create and evaluate food labels to determine the nutritional content of food.
Food scientists along with farmers and other professionals assist in establishing a healthy food supply.

Recommended Companion Resources

Activity • An Agricultural Interview
Kit • Career Trek Game
Teacher Reference • Mandarin Oranges: Protecting the Flavor of This Popular Fruit
Movie/Video • T. Marzetti Virtual Field Trip
Book • The Most Magnificent Thing
Teacher Reference • Yum! Fruit and Vegetable Wraps

Credits

Author

Mandi Bottoms and Shaney Emerson | California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom

Acknowledgements

This unit was funded by the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Secondary Agriculture Education Challenge Grants Program.

Executive Director: Judy Culbertson
Illustrator: Toni Smith
Layout and Design: Nina Danner and Renee Thompson
Copy Editor: Leah Rosasco

Standards

National Content Area Standards

Career & Technical Education
- AFNR (Grades 6-8): Career Ready Practices
  - CRP.10.1: Identify career opportunities within a career cluster that match personal interests, talents, goals and preferences.
- AFNR (Grades 6-8): Food Products and Processing Systems Career Pathway
  - FPP.02.01: Apply principles of nutrition and biology to develop food products that provide a safe, wholesome and nutritious food supply for local and global food systems.
  - FPP.02.03: Apply principles of human behavior to develop food products to provide a safe, wholesome and nutritious food supply for local and global food systems.
  - FPP.03.01: Implement selection, evaluation and inspection techniques to ensure safe and quality food products.

Agricultural Literacy Outcomes

Food, Health, and Lifestyle
- Identify the careers in food production, processing, and nutrition that are essential for a healthy food supply (T3.6-8.j)
- Evaluate food labels to determine food sources that meet nutritional needs (T3.6-8.b)

Common Core Standards

Anchor Standards – Speaking and Listening
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.1: Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.2: Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.5: Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.
Anchor Standards – Writing
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.1: Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.
Practice Standards – Mathematics
- CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP1: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. Students start by explaining to themselves the meaning of a problem and looking for entry points to its solution. They analyze givens, constraints, relationships, and goals. They make conjectures about the form and meaning of the solution and plan a solution pathway rather than simply jumping into a solution attempt. They consider analogous problems, and try special cases and simpler forms of the original problem in order to gain insight into its solution. They monitor and evaluate their progress and change course if necessary. Students check their answers to problems using a different method, and they continually ask themselves, “Does this make sense?” They can understand the approaches of others to solving complex problems and identify correspondences between different approaches.
- CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP2: Reason abstractly and quantitatively. Students make sense of quantities and their relationships in problem situations. They bring two complementary abilities to bear on problems involving quantitative relationships: the ability to decontextualize—to abstract a given situation and represent it symbolically and manipulate the representing symbols as if they have a life of their own, without necessarily attending to their referents—and the ability to contextualize, to pause as needed during the manipulation process in order to probe into the referents for the symbols involved. Quantitative reasoning entails habits of creating a coherent representation of the problem at hand; considering the units involved; attending to the meaning of quantities, not just how to compute them; and knowing and flexibly using different properties of operations and objects.
- CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP6: Attend to precision. Students try to communicate precisely to others. They try to use clear definitions in discussion with others and in their own reasoning. They state the meaning of the symbols they choose, including using the equal sign consistently and appropriately. They are careful about specifying units of measure, and labeling axes to clarify the correspondence with quantities in a problem. They calculate accurately and efficiently, express numerical answers with a degree of precision appropriate for the problem context.

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