Food: What are we eating and how do we know?

Was the Big question the Institute of Food Research (IFR) asked some of the thousands of visitors to the Big Bang Fair, the UK’s biggest celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths for young people, held at the NEC, Birmingham on 11-14 March

Greg Clark MP, Minister for Universities, Science & Cities, joined the IFR discovery trail into detecting what’s in our food, by taking part in a series of specially designed activities and games exploring what makes a balanced diet and the analytical sciences behind how we know.

The activities sparked many different conversations with the children about food, diet and nutrition, as well as interest from their teachers about how they could obtain the materials.

Hands-on activities included exploring what exactly a calorie is, using a calorimeter. We also explored some of the ingredients listed on food labels, and how they, and food science, are used to improve food structure, texture, and potentially how healthy it is.

A popular activity was when visitors got to play the role of food detectives and use a spectrophotometer to identify a range of mystery foods – and finding out how the instrument is being used to beat the criminals

Online versions of some the activities held at the Big Bang Fair are available at http://ilmt.co/PL/W0RZ.