Science Project Ideas: Low-Fat Foods

This project uses commonly found food products and human volunteers to determine if there is a discernible difference between differing fat levels in the same type of food. Not that this project is restricted to human participants; this will be explained below.

First, start off with a simple list of items including plastic or paper plates, notebook and pen, napkins, cups, and drinkable water. Food items can include any variation of cookies, pudding, potato chips, ice cream, snack crackers, pastries such as brownies or cream-filled sponge cake. Note that, for each food item, a low-fat or fat-free version and a regular version will be used together in this project.

Begin with an explanation of what will take place, demonstrating which foods will be sampled and in which order and using the cups to swallow water between tastings to help cleanse the palette.

Gathering volunteers will be very easy as free food is involved. Take care not to let the participants see the packaging that the food came in, have it ready to eat on disposable plates beforehand. Use the marker to mark on the edge of each plate which variety of food is on each plate using a code that only the project leader knows, such as "A" for regular food and "B" for low-fat food.

Portion out the food on plates. A good example of a portion would be two small cookies of the low-fat variety and two small cookies of the regular variety and one tablespoon of the low fat ice cream and one tablespoon of the regular ice cream.

Record the reaction of the participants in the notebook, taking care not to mix up the different plates. Not everyone has to sample all the food used in the experiment. Participants can each sample one or two types of food. Record if they can tell the difference between the two samples and which one they think is low fat and which one is regular. Also ask them which tastes the best.

One can enlist the help of a dog to see if animals can differentiate between the two. Place low-fat crackers on one plate and regular crackers on the other. When the dog has eaten from both plates, put more crackers on each plate and see if the dog favors one over the other. Be careful not to put anything on a plate that has chocolate, as chocolate is harmful to dogs.

To conclude, a chart can be made showing which of the foods the participants were able to distinguish between low-fat and regular versions. Another good idea is to produce an accompanying report to explain if there was a preference between hard and soft food, or salty and non-salty, or between low-fat and regular versions of sweetened or salty foods. The effect of artificial sweeteners can be touched on here if desired, as low-fat and artificially sweetened often go hand in hand.

This project can be very fun and can be even more so when non-human participants are recruited.