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What's on Your Plate? Food Technology (July 30, 2004, One)

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Program Summary

Who put the pop in your Pop Rocks, sent spaghetti into space, arranged little marshmallows in your Lucky Charms? Food technologists – those creative people that we also thank for new M & M colors, orange juice with extra calcium, and freeze-dried ice cream. Just about everything we put in our mouths has been grown, manufactured, or packaged with the help of science and technology.

Improving our health is one aim of the industry, and researchers are working on adding beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, found in salmon and other fish, to foods people are willing to eat (which is not always fish). They work to extend shelf life by experimenting with the atmosphere inside canned goods and using irradiation to kill microbes. In anticipation of a manned flight to Mars, food technologists are developing products and packaging that won’t spoil during the two-and-a-half year trip.

Not surprisingly, playing with food creates controversy. Genetic modification is perhaps the biggest one – tampering with the genetic makeup of a crop to produce a desired affect, such as corn with a “natural” pesticide or a tomato with greater flavor (the Holy Grail of foodies). So called "GM" food is slowly gaining acceptance in the United States, according to Ira’s guest, but is not doing well in Europe.

Guests

Charles R. Santerre, science communicator with the Institute of Food Technologists and associate professor in the department of foods and nutrition at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana

Related Links and Resources

Institute of Food Technologists
Food Technology
Food Product Design: Magazine for the food, beverage and nutrition industry
Prepared Foods Online

For Discussion:

• What do food technologists do?
• Why are food technologists interested in adding omega-3 fatty acids to food products? Where are these acids usually found?
• What are the problems of sending food into space for 2 ½ years?
• What is genetic modification as it relates to food? What is the European attitude towards GM food? Do you think GM is beneficial or harmful?
• What technologies have been used to produce or package your favorite foods?

Activities

Food, glorious food. The Institute of Food Technologists offers a series of lesson plans to acquaint students with the many aspects of food production and marketing. The two of most interest to middle-schoolers are Processing Food, in which students makes peanut butter and rate it, and Food Safety and Quality Assurance, in which students become quality assurance inspectors and test milk for microbes. Penn States’s Food Science Experiments and Learning Opportunities for All Ages page is a plethora of links to food-related experiments, lesson plans, Web sites, and books

Spaced-out Spam. What do astronauts eat and how do they eat it? Find out at Space Food History, part of PBS’ Space Station broadcast, and at Food for Space Flight (NASA). NASA’s excellent feature, Eat Right For Long-Distance Flight, discusses the challenges of eating nutritionally in space and supplies activities that investigate the problems of irradiation, packaging. At Discovery School’s Life in Space: International Space Station, students learn more about life aboard the space station, including the all-important question, “What’s for dinner?”

Hoo-ray for x-rays? Whyfiles’ From the Reactor to the Refrigerator explores food irradiation and the issues surrounding it. When Food Bites Back, an excellent presentation from Riverdeep, summarizes issues in food-borne illness and food safety and briefly looks at the debate on irradiation.

For more topics and activities in food technology, visit Science Friday Kids’ Connection Souped-up Supper: Genetically Modified Crops and Science Principles of Cooking.

Use the search box below to perform a Google search within any of the specifc sites or general domains mentioned in this Activities section.

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