I need help with methodology!

[ttl64]

Most people always concern about whether they should always go with organic food. Therefore, I would like to do a project to compare between organic vs. fortified food. Is it relevance to experiment on mealworms ? I would like to make this project high school level. Please let me know if you have any suggestions. Thanks !

[deleted-71447]

Hi,
The differences between organic and conventional food products seems like an interesting and relevant topic. The topic of whether low concentrations of pesticides affect human health is a controversial and very difficult topic to address. It might be easier to address issues of product longevity (for example, how long does it take different types of veggies to spoil?) or environmental effects (for example, how does organic versus conventional farm practice affect the organic matter content of soil? the amount of nutrients leaching to ground water or running off to rivers? )
Good luck!
Chris

[ttl64]

Sorry for mispresenting my idea. Some examples of fortified food are flour, oats, and grains in which they were injected additional vitamins/minerals. How can I conduct an experiment to determine which product is best ? Organic or fortified ? I wanted to use a nonveterbrate animal to conduct this research on. Again, I'm not sure if there is a relevant purpose to do so or not. Is there any similarities between conventional and fortify process ?
Thanks for your help!

[deleted-71447]

Hi, by "organic" do you mean food that is grown with organic agricultural practices (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming) or food that is non-fortified? It is possible to have food that is fortified and organic. See, for example, links at http://www.google.com/search?q=fortified+organic
Maybe you mean to say that you will compare fortified and non-fortified food?
In scientific studies, we tend not to think of one thing being "best" or "better" than another. That is because the words "better" and "best" can have different meanings to different people and different situations. Instead, try to think of specific effects that the foods might have and, in particular, try to think of specific effects that you could test in your experiment. For example, you could test whether there is a difference in the rate of increase of biomass of meal worms fed on fortified versus non-fortified foods. This is not especially relevant to human health, but you might be able to think of some other relevance.

[ttl64]

Hi,
Thanks for the input! I would like to know if is it relevant to look at the effect of fortified vs. non-fortified food on mealworms? For example, I can look at the effects on: life length, behavior, and mass of mealworms. Then, can I connect the result of this experiment to other similar/related organisms?
Also, do you think this is an interesting enough project? I'm trying to improve it as much as I can. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.
Thanks a lot!
(By the way, what do you mean by biomass of mealworms ? Sorry, I didn't quite understand it)

[deleted-71447]

Hi, Biomass is the mass of some organism or group of organisms, or, as you put it, the "mass of mealworms."
Whether the project is interesting to us is not as important as whether it is interesting to you!
Regards,
Chris

[ttl64]

I found some flour product packages at the grocery store labeled as organic flour. The ingredient said Certified 100% Organic Wheat. I also found some fortified unbleached/bleached flour produced by the same company that produced the organic flour. Can these fortified flours be considered as conventional product ? Is the organic flour from that company really organic ?
I've decided to look at the pesticide residues level between organic vs. conventional flour. I also want to compare unbleached vs. bleached flour (both are fortified). Bleached flour tends to be mal in nutrients due to the bleaching process. Even though it is fortifed, it still can't ful-fill some essential vitamins/minerals originally were in the wheat. The chemical from bleached flour can be quite harmful, too. I would like to test these hypotheses on mealworms. Please let me know whether these hypotheses are appropriate. Thanks !

[deleted-71447]

Hi,
Sounds like you are making good progress.

Can these fortified flours be considered as conventional product ? Is the organic flour from that company really organic ?

Where I live, if a food product is not "organic" then it is often called "conventional". I don't know what regulations exist in your area for labeling food as "organic". It might be very difficult to determine the farming practices that were used for a packaged food.

How would you study pesticide residues? As I mentioned earlier, this can be a very difficult topic to attempt.

I think you are close to forming an experimental hypothesis. A hypothesis should be a statement that makes a prediction about, for example, whether meal worms will grow faster when fed with bleached flour or with unbleached flour. (You could also include whole wheat versus white flour).

[ttl64]

Hi,
Basically, mealworm is a type of pantry pest. If there is any pesticide presents in the flour, the worms would not grow very well. I'm expecting the conventional flour such as unbleached and bleached flour to contain pesticide, not the organic. I would like to have 2 conventional flour samples: unbleached (less in vitamins, more in pesticide), bleached (more in vitamins, more in pesticide). Another 2 organic flour samples: organic (less in vitamins, no pesticide), and fortified organic (more in vitamins, no pesticide).
Here are my problems: I couldn't find any fortified organic flour. I believed that bleached flour would have somewhat less nutrients than unbleached flour due to the bleaching process. When I look at bleached and unbleached nutritions facts, they are exactly identical. I am not sure if there is any hidden or insignificant nutrients in the flour or not.
If you have any suggestions on how to improve my project, please let me know!
Thanks a lot!

[deleted-71447]

Hi, I agree it's possible that trace amounts of pesticides in flour could affect the growth of meal worms, but I expect it will be difficult to test that hypothesis with the current experiment. You might be able to conclude "meal worms grew more (or less) quickly when fed organic flour as compared to those fed conventional four" but that does not necessarily mean that the difference is a result of pesticide concentrations. When you buy two different packages of flour, there are many possible differences due to various farming and processing procedures which could potentially affect the growth of meal worms. So it would be difficult or impossible to know whether an observed difference resulted from pesticides, crop differences, or processing effects. If you would really like to test pesticides specifically, then I would suggest that you treat the flour yourself - for example, take one batch of flour, split it in half, treat one half with a *very low* concentration of pesticide, and then grow meal worms under identical conditions fed either on the pesticide treated or untreated flour. You could also do multiple treatments with varying concentrations of pesticide in the flour.

I would like to have 2 conventional flour samples: unbleached (less in vitamins, more in pesticide), bleached (more in vitamins, more in pesticide)...

As mentioned above, it is probably not possible to say that differences in treatments using unbleached and bleached flour would relate to vitamins or pesticides in particular. If you want to control for the effects of pesticides or vitamins, I would recommend making those flour treatments yourself and not relying on pre-packaged foods.

I couldn't find any fortified organic flour.

It should not be too much trouble to fortify your own flour.

I hope that helps.
Chris

[ttl64]

Hi,
Can I fortify AND treat the flour with pesticide by myself ? For ex: Can I select organic flour which doesn't contain any pesticide or additional nutrients and split it into 4 treatments as I described ? I'm not sure if this is something relevant to do because the way I fortify my flour would probably different than the way the millers fortify their flours, the kinds people consume. I want to be able to relate my project to the human subject. By manually fortify the product, does that cause much differences between the flour I use and the miller's flours ?
Also, the home-made treatments might not have went through as many conditions as actual conventional flours. Is this a problem ?
Thanks for helping!

[deleted-71447]

Yes, you can split it into 4 treatments, or as many as you want, as long as you are careful about how you control your variables in each treatment.
Myself, I would have more confidence in an experiment that controls the flour composition, as opposed to one that uses commercially available versions of flour that are uncontrolled in their composition. However, if you could contact a manufacturer to obtain detailed information on the origin, processing, and additives in each flour, that could be a good approach also. Even then, you will never know for sure that your variables of interest are the only variables involved, because of issues like time of storage, temperature of storage, and other differences in conditions that can occur after packaging.

You could try to use both approaches by using, for example, your own enriched flour and commercially enriched flour.

[ttl64]

At the end of my study, I discovered something very interesting yet contradicted my hypothesis. The organic treatment eventually led to the worst result. The fortified organic had the best result due to extra nutrients. The pesticide residue did little effect to mealworms. What kind of questions do you think the judges might ask me during the presentation ?
Thanks! Your inputs would really help me preparing for my presentation!

[deleted-71447]

Congratulations on seeing this through to the end!

I think that the judges' specific questions will depend on your presentation. For example, something in your figures might catch their attention. It's hard to know without seeing the presentation. The more you can tell us about what you'll present, the more we can say about what sort of questions you might get. Also, a very good way to prepare is to show your presentation to someone in advance, and to encourage that person to give honest constructive advice.

The issue of uncontrolled variables might come up, because uncontrolled variables are hard to avoid in this type of experiment. The judges might want to know what uncontrolled variables exist in this experiment, and whether you consider those when you interpret the results.

I hope that helps,
Chris

[ttl64]

Specifically, what happened was that the Organic Treatments showed a longer life-time cycle than the Conventional Treatments. (I concluded this because I detected fewer worms at the organic containers than at the conventional containers.) However, the worms from the conventional treatments eventually had greater length and weight than the worms from the organic treatments; this is because of the extra nutrients. Surprisingly, more dead worms were detected from the Organic Treatments. (the pesticide didn't harm the worms like the way I hypothesized!) I went back and did more researches and found out that when flours are treated organically, they are exposed to intensive heat which in turn made the flour low in moisture content. The worms probably were dehydrated and dried out. Sorry for didn't provide enough information from the beginning.
Base on this result, is there anything I need to address clearly before my presentation ?
I really appreciate your comments!
Thanks!

[deleted-71447]

Hi ttl64,
Those are some interesting results. In scientific writing and speaking, there is a hierarchy of terminology to describe results, interpretations, conclusions. I think this hierarchy would be helpful to you, so I'll explain more. When you describe your results, you can usually present them as fact. For example "After 14 days Container A contained 14 worms and container B contained 18 worms". On the other hand, when you give an interpretation of your results, it is important to "qualify" your statement to let people know (and to show that you know) that it is a possibility, but not necessarily a fact. This is usually done by adding a words like "possibly" "or "may have" or "likely". For example, "The high average body mass of worms in container B may have resulted from nutrient additions to the conventional flour in that container" or " the high rate of mortality of worms in container A possibly resulted from lower moisture content in that flour."
This may seem like picky semantics, but it is actually a very important convention in scientific writing and speaking. It shows that you are aware that other possibilities exist, even if you don't have space or time to explain all those possibilities. Currently it seems you have these possible interpretations: (1) organic flour was very dry, which inhibited growth of the worms and (2) added nutrients in the conventional flour made the worms grow faster (3) both 1 and 2.
The conclusion about "longer life time cycle" is not clear to me. You might want to clarify and/or reconsider that point.
I hope that helps,
Chris