Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My daughter has been assigned nutrition as the topic for her science fair project. I have heard about the fast food time-lapse “experiments”. I think this would give her a good understanding of preservatives but wondered if this is a true experiment. I wanted to use fast food v/s a home cooked version of the same thing and follow this with research on preservatives and how the body processes them.
Any suggestions??

That is a great idea! You may want to consider comparing more than 2 (home cooked vs. fast food) types of a meal. You could compare additional options which would vary with respect to preservatives. For example, you could also compare a store-bought, make it a home version of the same meal, and perhaps even a microwave version. Depending on the meal selected, the amount of preservatives in stove-top meals or microwave meals would be considerably different than both the fast-food option and the home cooked option. You could use objective measures (visual observation) regarding food options and the level of decomposition you observe after 3, 5, 7, 10 days, etc. The data would be very easy to display (e.g. bar graph for each, or line graph for summary data). Hope this helps.

In addition, you could visit the Science Buddy website: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... NjM4LHA6MQ. It lists lots of good ideas on Cooking and Food Science Projects for K-5.

Good luck!