The Ethics and Chemistry of Food and Cooking
About the Project
The Ethics and Chemistry of Food and Cooking was a cross-curricular project in Humanities and Chemistry (to read my Humanities DP update, head HERE). As the title suggests, in Humanities we studied the ethics of eating: where our food comes from, the environmental implications of our diets, and what it means to have a “food ethic.” We read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, watched the documentary Fed Up, and engaged with several guest speakers. Eventually, we were asked to develop and articulate our own food ethics in a short, personal essay.
For the Chemistry part of the project, we learned about various branches of food science. We did a lab on calorimetry to study the amount of energy contained in food. We learned about qualitative and quantitative ways to assess characteristics of food. Then, each student chose their own project regarding some aspect of food science. We were required to do an experiment where we changed a variable in the recipe and observed how it affected the final product. For my experiment, I made ricotta cheese using milk with different fat content. You can see my experiment explained in the recipe card below.
Instead of having a traditional exhibition for this project, we served a meal. Groups of 5-6 students planned, cooked, and hosted a meal for 10-12 people. We called it “slow food:” a time to talk about food ethics and the science of food, meet new people, and generally delight in the experience of eating. My group’s meal turned out very well. The theme of our dinner was “organic vs. conventional” and we served each version of all the dishes.
How does cooking transform food and how can these transformations be understood as chemical processes?
Like everything else in the universe, food is made of elements. We hope there isn’t arsenic, but there’s plenty of iron, selenium, zinc, and phosphorus in the steak you ate last night. And made of these elements (and more) are proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. When you cook a steak, or any other food for that matter, you modify the structure of the molecules--you transform the food. For example, scrambling eggs denatures the proteins, heating butter turns it from a solid into a liquid, and cooking vegetables causes their cell walls to break down. Essentially, cooking food modifies its atomic structure so that its characteristics are different than before.
Many of the transformations that take place in cooking are best understood as chemical processes. A chemical process can be defined as a change in a chemical or chemical compound; this is exactly what happens when you cook most things. If you bake bread, yeast in the bread breaks down carbohydrates to release carbon dioxide--this is a process that changes the chemical compounds in bread. Another example is cheese: bacteria in cheese breaks down cheese sugar, lactose, into lactic acid. Chemical processes occur when chemicals and compounds are changed in some way, and the action of cooking causes such changes in chemicals.
In what way(s) are cooking and doing science similar and in what way(s) are they different? How are a cook and a food scientist similar or different?
Before students arrive at the Chemistry Lab at Fort Lewis College, they’re handed a couple of papers, the instructions for the lab. In their hurried time at the lab, they’ll closely follow the lab directions: measuring, mixing, heating, cooling, reacting, and synthesizing. Finally, they’ll leave the lab with data.
When a cook plans a meal, he starts with a recipe, detailed instructions to make a certain dish. In the kitchen, he’ll follow the recipe: measuring, mixing, heating, cooling, reacting, and synthesizing. He’ll exit the kitchen with a meal, to be enjoyed by himself and his family.
Many fields of science are based on observation: chemists observe how chemicals interact, biologists observe life systems and processes, physicists observe phenomena involving mass and energy. Cooking is comparable because it’s also based on observation--a chef constantly assesses the smell, taste, and appearance of their dish. Both cooking and doing science follow a protocol for how they should be carried out, use specific quantities of chemicals or foods to achieve a desired outcome, and one can draw conclusions from the work. A lot of the activities done by a cook are similar to those done by a scientist, like boiling and mixing. The scientist might use their experiment to inform a future experiment or explain a scientific law; the cook might use properties of their food to modify the recipe in the future.
However, there are differences between cooking and doing science. First, they are done for different reasons; subsequently, they produce different products. Foundationally, people cook to feed themselves. There are many more complex reasons, such as to teach culture, create community, and learn. But at the most basic level, we cook to nourish our bodies. Science satisfies our desire to understand. We do science to learn more and explain the world around us. Whereas the result of cooking is calories for human consumption, the result of doing science is data and understanding.
The Ethics and Chemistry of Food and Cooking was a cross-curricular project in Humanities and Chemistry (to read my Humanities DP update, head HERE). As the title suggests, in Humanities we studied the ethics of eating: where our food comes from, the environmental implications of our diets, and what it means to have a “food ethic.” We read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, watched the documentary Fed Up, and engaged with several guest speakers. Eventually, we were asked to develop and articulate our own food ethics in a short, personal essay.
For the Chemistry part of the project, we learned about various branches of food science. We did a lab on calorimetry to study the amount of energy contained in food. We learned about qualitative and quantitative ways to assess characteristics of food. Then, each student chose their own project regarding some aspect of food science. We were required to do an experiment where we changed a variable in the recipe and observed how it affected the final product. For my experiment, I made ricotta cheese using milk with different fat content. You can see my experiment explained in the recipe card below.
Instead of having a traditional exhibition for this project, we served a meal. Groups of 5-6 students planned, cooked, and hosted a meal for 10-12 people. We called it “slow food:” a time to talk about food ethics and the science of food, meet new people, and generally delight in the experience of eating. My group’s meal turned out very well. The theme of our dinner was “organic vs. conventional” and we served each version of all the dishes.
How does cooking transform food and how can these transformations be understood as chemical processes?
Like everything else in the universe, food is made of elements. We hope there isn’t arsenic, but there’s plenty of iron, selenium, zinc, and phosphorus in the steak you ate last night. And made of these elements (and more) are proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. When you cook a steak, or any other food for that matter, you modify the structure of the molecules--you transform the food. For example, scrambling eggs denatures the proteins, heating butter turns it from a solid into a liquid, and cooking vegetables causes their cell walls to break down. Essentially, cooking food modifies its atomic structure so that its characteristics are different than before.
Many of the transformations that take place in cooking are best understood as chemical processes. A chemical process can be defined as a change in a chemical or chemical compound; this is exactly what happens when you cook most things. If you bake bread, yeast in the bread breaks down carbohydrates to release carbon dioxide--this is a process that changes the chemical compounds in bread. Another example is cheese: bacteria in cheese breaks down cheese sugar, lactose, into lactic acid. Chemical processes occur when chemicals and compounds are changed in some way, and the action of cooking causes such changes in chemicals.
In what way(s) are cooking and doing science similar and in what way(s) are they different? How are a cook and a food scientist similar or different?
Before students arrive at the Chemistry Lab at Fort Lewis College, they’re handed a couple of papers, the instructions for the lab. In their hurried time at the lab, they’ll closely follow the lab directions: measuring, mixing, heating, cooling, reacting, and synthesizing. Finally, they’ll leave the lab with data.
When a cook plans a meal, he starts with a recipe, detailed instructions to make a certain dish. In the kitchen, he’ll follow the recipe: measuring, mixing, heating, cooling, reacting, and synthesizing. He’ll exit the kitchen with a meal, to be enjoyed by himself and his family.
Many fields of science are based on observation: chemists observe how chemicals interact, biologists observe life systems and processes, physicists observe phenomena involving mass and energy. Cooking is comparable because it’s also based on observation--a chef constantly assesses the smell, taste, and appearance of their dish. Both cooking and doing science follow a protocol for how they should be carried out, use specific quantities of chemicals or foods to achieve a desired outcome, and one can draw conclusions from the work. A lot of the activities done by a cook are similar to those done by a scientist, like boiling and mixing. The scientist might use their experiment to inform a future experiment or explain a scientific law; the cook might use properties of their food to modify the recipe in the future.
However, there are differences between cooking and doing science. First, they are done for different reasons; subsequently, they produce different products. Foundationally, people cook to feed themselves. There are many more complex reasons, such as to teach culture, create community, and learn. But at the most basic level, we cook to nourish our bodies. Science satisfies our desire to understand. We do science to learn more and explain the world around us. Whereas the result of cooking is calories for human consumption, the result of doing science is data and understanding.
Lab Reports
Since Freshman year, I have been looking forward to taking chemistry. Now, I'm ending the year with a similar sentiment: I don't want it to end! We have done all our labs for the year, and we are almost done with our final project. Below are my three most-recent labs, which are also the work I am most proud of. I enjoyed chemistry much more than I have enjoyed any science class recently, and I am planning on taking Advanced Chemistry next year.
Water Quality in the Animas River Watershed
In this project, we were tasked with designing a potential exhibit for the educational space at La Plata County's newly-remodeled Water Reclamation Facility. My group's Artist Design Statement, below, describes our idea for an exhibit.
This document contains the information we collected on pollutants. At the exhibition, it was displayed surrounding a map to represent our exhibit. See a photo of the map and information displayed at the exhibition below.