Natural Preservatives in Bread and How Quickly They Mold

This experiment was preformed in order to figure out which of four different samples of bread containing three different variables grew the most amount of bread over a one-week period.

In kitchens across America, and every other country across the world there is the issue of fast-molding homemade bread. Since these homemade breads have little to no chemical or otherwise preservatives within them, they tend to mold many times faster than average store bought bread. Why cook homemade bread some may ask? Why not walk on over to the nearest super market and buy the cheapest brand? Well many of these overused preservatives have negative health effects on people. People are allergic to a very high percentage of every day preservatives and chemicals used in foods; MSG, Mono Sodium Glutamate is a very common one. (Kerr, Michael, 2012) Ammonium, for example is found in many bread and meat products as a preservative. It is also used in various household cleaners. High amounts of ingested ammonium could be sickening or lethal. ("Questions and Answers about Ammonium Hydroxide Use in Food Production.” 2009.) An alternate preservative commonly used in breads is called Azodicarbonamide. Azodicarbonamide actually can “heighten an allergic reaction to food.” It is also a chemical used to make rubber (Wong,Vanessa, 1 May 2014) and is said to be a cause of asthma according to scientists in the UK.

The objective of this experiment was to measure how natural preservatives (such as sugar, salt and raisins) effect the molding time of homemade bread by using excess amounts of said preservative. It will be compared to the control variable, which is the bread that is left alone with no extra preservatives.

The predicted outcome of this experiment was ...

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