WIPS #1

"Nutritional and visual enhancement of pureed food products"

Matthew Fascio and Cathy Draper are trying to find a way to make pureed food more nutritional, and they are also trying to make it look more edible. Cathy would like people who have to eat pureed food to want to eat it. Looks and smells are a big part in determining whether certain foods seem tasty. Cathy speeds through the introduction about the product, maybe because she is a little nervous. Matthew then goes through his experiment. He seems to be nervous. He is stuttering and her mumbles. He is also slouching over. His was over a pureed sandwich. They had to use something from the campus garden and something "left over." He uses bell peppers from the garden, and day old bread. His teacher inspired him to do this project. He did a few different trials, and he didn't like his first outcome. He changed the methods of freezing and came out with a better result. He put the data on a hydonic scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being dislike very much and so on. He also looked at the protein content and the calories before and after the experiment, and he observed that the protein went up about 50% and the calories went up about 50 more. Cathy did a stir fry meal using bell peppers and basil from the garden and cooked rice for the "left over." She was looking for something visually appealing. She did a chicken stir fry, and had some trouble with her portion sizes. Her first product was okay, but she really enjoyed the final product. She changed it by the way she chopped her ingredients and by freezing each seperately so they all contained their own flavor. She did the same data as Matthew, but her outcome was not what she wanted, since her portions were off. They each had challenges, like the bread would get sticky and fall apart after pureed, and portions not being quite right. Overall, they had the desired outcome of making the food better looking and making it more nutritional. This sort of showed me that it takes a while to get the desired results of something. It takes a lot of background knowledge to sound like you know what you are talking about and to be able to relay it to someone else. It was cool to see someone passionate about the project, because they weren't forced to present it, and they were just wanting to show someone what they came up with.