Fat in Potato Chips
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Fat in Potato Chips
I would like to do this investigation with my class, however, I am hung up on the correlation of the greasy boxes and grams of fat. For instance, when I did this at home, I counted over 600 boxes that were completely filled with grease or over half filled. That number is much larger than the average fat in grams on the package. How do I explain this 'average' number to the students? How is the number of checked boxes that same as the '10 grams of fat' per serving on the bag?
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Re: Fat in Potato Chips
Hi djtarbet --
This sounds like a great exploration to do with students!
In your testing, you said you had more than 600 squares for the chip you tested. Did you try another kind of chip (baked, for example) as well? If so, you may have seen very different results.
What you should be able to do with this project is compare the number of squares for each type of chip you test (how do they compare with each other) and also look at how those squares compare to the amount of fat listed on the label for each type. The procedure helps students get a visual understanding of the fat in a type of potato chip... and how much one type contains compared to others. This makes it easier to understand what the difference is between a chip with 6g fat per serving vs 10g fat per serving, for example. (This visual comparison is one way to compare; they can also compare the nutritional label.)
It is important to note that the experiment is not going to equate to actual grams of fat. (1 square won't equal 1 gram of fat.) The goal is not to find out exactly how much fat is in a type of chip by looking at the squares. (You have the label for that.) You and your students may, however, be able to make a correlation after doing multiple tests and comparing results to labels. After testing various kinds of chips, your students should be able to see that chips that left oil on lots of squares during the experiment have more fat than chips that left less oil. Looking at the nutritional labels should confirm what they find with the hands-on experiment.
If you want to look at the fats more closely, there is a more advanced procedure to extract the fats from foods in this project: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... #procedure But that project is for upper middle school and older students.
Does this help clear up the question?
Amy
Science Buddies
This sounds like a great exploration to do with students!
In your testing, you said you had more than 600 squares for the chip you tested. Did you try another kind of chip (baked, for example) as well? If so, you may have seen very different results.
What you should be able to do with this project is compare the number of squares for each type of chip you test (how do they compare with each other) and also look at how those squares compare to the amount of fat listed on the label for each type. The procedure helps students get a visual understanding of the fat in a type of potato chip... and how much one type contains compared to others. This makes it easier to understand what the difference is between a chip with 6g fat per serving vs 10g fat per serving, for example. (This visual comparison is one way to compare; they can also compare the nutritional label.)
It is important to note that the experiment is not going to equate to actual grams of fat. (1 square won't equal 1 gram of fat.) The goal is not to find out exactly how much fat is in a type of chip by looking at the squares. (You have the label for that.) You and your students may, however, be able to make a correlation after doing multiple tests and comparing results to labels. After testing various kinds of chips, your students should be able to see that chips that left oil on lots of squares during the experiment have more fat than chips that left less oil. Looking at the nutritional labels should confirm what they find with the hands-on experiment.
If you want to look at the fats more closely, there is a more advanced procedure to extract the fats from foods in this project: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... #procedure But that project is for upper middle school and older students.
Does this help clear up the question?
Amy
Science Buddies