Can your students identify food aromas? In this lesson, students will have an opportunity to sniff and identify up to 32 aromas. This is part of the Food Science CDE in FFA as well!

This lab book is intended for use in both the lab and kitchen. Each section of the book contains learning objectives, lab problems to be solved, recipes, questions, and observation charts for the input of data.

In this activity, learners burn a peanut, which produces a flame that can be used to boil away water and count the calories contained in the peanut. Learners use a formula to calculate the calories in a peanut and then differentiate between food calories and physicist calories as well as calories and joules.

This five-lesson unit was designed to introduce elementary students to the basic chemistry behind making playdough as they take on the role of a chemical engineer and endeavor to develop a process (or recipe) for making playdough. In addition, it will inject a fundamental knowledge of chemistry, and students will use the basis of this knowledge to improve consistency in producing high-quality playdough that is comparable to retail brand “Play-Doh” in texture, elasticity, and pliability. Along the way, students will learn the role of each ingredient and the reasoning behind each step of the process (mixing, kneading, and applying heat). There will also be room for experimentation as students explore the role of added ingredients and/or vary the preparation and cooking processes. Students will record their measured ingredients and procedures used for each batch of playdough in a chemical engineering journal and present their best final product to the class. The unit promotes an introduction to chemistry, engineering, and using an organized method to record notes and observations. Not only that, but making playdough is a lot of fun! Fair warning – students will be excited, and some results may come out sticky and messy! The unit is designed to take five one-hour long class sessions but can be extended or shortened at the discretion of the teacher.

This collection of food science activities asks students to evaluate how fast food affects their lives.  Sections include Fast Food Dissection, Fast Food Caloric Count, Supersize Me video discussion, and a research paper activity. Written by Lee Weis of Ell-Saline High School, Brookville, KS in 2008.

This lesson introduces students to measuring food ingredients, provides a lab opportunity to experiment with measuring tools, and assesses students' knowledge on all content.

This lesson plan serves as a final project for a food science class. This project incorporates everything students learned throughout a year long food science class. Students will develop and make their own original food product complete with a nutrition label, marketing plan, and science behind how it's made.

This is an activity about a very important ingredient in most baked goods - gluten! Why is gluten so important? Without it, there would be nothing to hold the gas that makes bread rise. Learners will experiment with different types of flour to get a feel for gluten, and discover why using different flours can lead to such different results in the kitchen.

This lesson will help students learn proper handwashing techniques.

This is a lesson in which students use prior scientific knowledge as well as 21st century skills to create a short video explaining the school's healthy eating policy as well as its scientific underpinnings.  It is designed as a method of group assessment at the end of the topic of food science.

The purpose of this unit is to make EM waves of different wavelengths apparent in students’ everyday lives. This will be accomplished by using devices that students are already familiar with and most likely take for granted ­­–microwave and conventional ovens. Students come into the classroom with the understanding that the microwave oven makes their food hot but without knowing why or how this happens at a molecular level. This unit will give the students real-world context for applications of microwaves and infrared waves.

Understanding wave properties and EM waves is relevant to students because EM waves are used for many purposes and surround us every day. These EM waves are used for technology. There are valid health and safety concerns with exposure to some higher frequency waves, such as ultraviolet radiation, x-rays, and gamma rays. This unit will explore why the microwaves in the microwave oven and infrared radiation from the conventional oven do not have the same safety concerns as the higher energy EM waves.

This unit is an attempt to inform high school students about some of the fundamental concepts that constitute this important area of science - the food chemistry. Students will review the concepts of chemical compounds, mixtures (solutions, suspensions, colloids and emulsions), physical and chemical changes and learn about food chemistry. They will also learn about some of the most important organic chemistry compounds, the hydrocarbon derivatives or functional groups.

This unit will be tied into students’ chemistry courses, strengthening their knowledge of organic chemistry and preparing them for future college biochemistry, general and organic chemistry classes. The lesson plans require about 12 class periods and cover the concepts of covalent bonds (single, double and triple bonds), functional groups (alcohols, aldehydes and ketones, carboxylic acids, esters, amines, amides) and mixtures (suspensions, colloids, and emulsions). The last lesson is going to cover the basic concepts of hydrophilicity, hydrophobicity, and amphiphilicity of different molecules mixed with water.

As technology becomes ever integrated into our food system and everyday life, our food industry and supply become ever more vulnerable to attack. Cyber attacks continue to threaten large and small companies, government agencies, individuals, and food and agriculture. This module, ‘Securing the Food Industry,’ aims to introduce the idea of cyberbiosecurity through a lecture format along with three case studies allowing students to interact and think through the concepts and materials. This module was built for implementation into college level courses with connection or interest in the food industry, food science, and agriculture as well as and technology courses focused on real world applications.
The lecture starts by introducing the amount of technology in food science and the food industry then transitions into concerns about security. After discussing multiple subtypes of security already integrated into the food industry, cyberbiosecurity is introduced. The term and definition are discussed before the categories of cyber attacks are introduced. The lecture relates these ideas back to the food industry before sharing a few real-life examples of detrimental cyber-attacks. The lecture concludes are explain the impact a cyber attack can cause, who is responsible for preventing and recovering from these attacks, as well as suggested practices to reduce vulnerabilities. Three theoretical but realistic case studies with discussion questions follow the lecture. These studies were written to act as small group discussion starters but could be used for whole class discussion, individual writing assignments, or other applications.
A list of additional resources can be found with the course material. This list provides a small sampling of additional documents which discuss cyberbiosecurity. The resources listed at the end of the lecture are not included in the additional resources document but also provide helpful information in the exploration and understanding of cyberbiosecurity. Food science resources are also included in this document to provide additional background around the food industry portion of this course material.

Securing the Food Industry is an open educational resource (OER). Instructors reviewing, adopting, or adapting the module should indicate their interest at https://forms.gle/orFRGhYs8owBP7gD6.

This lesson presents an overview of the Food Science Industry.  Learners will learn about proper nutrition, create informational flyers on food-borne pathogenic organisms, and create their very own food product label.

Dried meat has long been a staple for Indigenous communities throughout the world. The process and practice of using time, heat, and seasonings to create something that is safe, satisfying and sustainable is a delicate balance that Indigenous people have mastered for Millenia. And that's science!

One important sector of the Food Industry is new product development.  At the conclusion of a basic food science unit, students will have the opportunity to develop their own new food products and consider how they will market their items to consumers.

This curriculum unit, exploring the energy in food and the thermodynamics of cooking, will include 5 days of 80-minute lessons in which the students will pick a particular food to study. The food will either need to be purchased or produced, and will need to be a food that begins as batter or liquid and solidifies during cooking. For those students who, for any reason, cannot bring in the food, they will be provided a brownie, cupcake, or other common food item. The project will contain two main components or parts. First, the energy stored within the food will be analyzed by applying mathematics. This will require conversion between a common physics unit of kilojoules (kJ) and a common household unit of kilocalories (kcal, CAL or Calories). Students will then need to apply their knowledge of work and energy conservation to provide an example of physical exercise that would be required for them to expend an equal amount of energy that is contained in their food. If a student is uncomfortable sharing their own mass, they may use the common example of a 70-kg person. The second part of their project will involve them using experimental data to determine the heat diffusion constant for their particular food by using a method similar to that described by Rowat et al. published in 2014, “The kitchen as a physics classroom10.” This can be done by placing several thermocouples in their food sample (or probing with toothpicks as will be described later) while heating until the center of the food gets to a desired temperature. Once the diffusion constant is determined, it can then be used to derive an equation that will allow the students to determine the required cooking time based on the size of the food sample. Although larger meals may be interesting samples for the experiment, the food samples must remain reasonably small so that the experiment can be completed within a single class period and can be cooked using toaster ovens or small classroom heaters. Students, in groups of 2-3, will be required to share their data with the class so that the results can be discussed. Students will be graded on their mathematical analysis and an accurate derivation of an equation to predict cooking time based on their measured diffusion constant. Teacher checks will be structured strategically throughout the process to ensure student projects meet the requirements and that student groups remain on pace. By relating energy in food to exercises with equal outputs, and by generating equations to ensure foods will be cooked properly, students not only learn physics in an engaging way but also learn how physics can be used to tackle real-world problems.

Food product development can include many different parts and ideas. In this lesson, students will create and market a kind of popcorn.