Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am helping my son with his science fair project on do some foods have higher antioxidant levels than others using the apple test. Everywhere I research, this test is done with vitamins not the actual fruit/food. Is it possible to test this with actual food? Raspberries/blueberries for example? if we placed an apple slice in a jar with a fruit would it do anything? and would the test work better if the food was broken down and the apple and food were placed in water? In some tests it is showing juice which may cause discoloration to the apple.

Hi,

Great project idea!

I did some research on this, and I believe I figured some things out. Firstly, I do not think anything will happen if you just put fruit(foods loaded with antioxidant) next to the apple. This is because the nutrients of the fruit can not just go between the two fruits. Juice may work, but I think you might want to test this out as a precursor to the actual project. However, if you are on a time crunch or you find that the juice does not work, I highly suggest going the multivitamin route. Multivitamins are used because they provide a better way to control your experiment. Fruits and juices have so many more nutrients than just vitamins, which could easily interfere with your project. Multivitamins are mostly pure.

As stated, if you have the time, play around with juices and see if they help with the apple test. However, if you are in a time crunch, I suggest using multivitamins.

Good Luck and please let me know if you have any more questions,
Shivansh