Agriculture students have spent the last two weeks learning different methods and techniques of food preservation. Things such as sugaring, canning, drying, dehydrating, and pickling. All of this as a part of their food processing unit, and for one of their final projects they are attempting to keep potato chips from going stale.
Students had open access to any combination of a jar, a paper bag, a plastic bag, and saran-wrap. Their only goal was to keep their chips from getting stale so students got to decide what was best.
Freshmen Lucas Delafuente and Giovanni Gaytan Selgren decided on, ““The jar is airtight and prevents air from entering the jar. This is going to keep the chips from oxidizing and getting stale. We also added plastic wrap on the top to keep out the moisture and any germs.”
Most students landed on something similar. They used a jar with a lid wrapped in seran-wrap and the rest of the jar was covered with tin foil. Selgren said, “Jaring helps food to last longer and tinfoil stops light from entering the jar to help keep food from spoiling.”
The goal of this experiment and the unit as a whole was to teach kids the importance of knowing where our food comes from and how we preserve it. Agriculture teacher Ms. Alexandra Grimes said, “One of our facets of agriculture is food production and food science. We want to teach kids why we package food certain way to keep them safe and consumer friendly.”