The Energy Content of Foods

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Energy content is an important property of food. The energy your body needs for running, talking, and thinking comes from the food you eat. For this project I conducted an experiment on different kinds of nuts in which I aimed to determine how much energy were stored in these nuts. The experiment was executed by burning these nuts to heat up a container of water and calculating the change in temperature that takes place. Using the change in temperature, one could calculate the amount of energy set free by the burning nuts.

My hypothesis for this project will be:

“Is there a variance in energy contained in food based on the general size, weight, origin and texture? “.

Research was also conducted on the energy in food and what factors influence this energy.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 INTRODUCTION 8

1.1 BACKGROUND 8

1.2 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY 8

1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 8

1.4 METHODOLOGY 8

2 FOOD AND ENERGY 9

2.1 INTRODUCTION 9

2.2 ENERGY 9

2.3 BIOENERGETICS 9

2.4 FOOD ENERGY 10

2.4.1 NUTS 10

2.4.1.1 Effects of Roasting 10

3 FIELD OBSERVATIONS 11

3.1 EXPERIMENT AND METHOD 11

3.1.1 BACKGROUND 11

3.1.1.1 Units 11

3.1.2 APPARATUS AND REQUIREMENTS 12

3.1.3 METHOD 12

3.2 DATA AND CALCULATIONS 13

3.3 RESULTS 14

3.3.1 SIZE AND WEIGHT 14

3.3.2 TEXTURE 15

3.3.3 ORIGIN 15

4 CONCLUSION 16

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE 1 - TABLE OF RESULTS 12

TABLE 2 – CLASSIFIATION OF TEXTURES 14

TABLE 3 – AVERAGE ENERGY IN NUTS 14

TABLE 4 – CULTIVATION OF NUTS 14

LIST OF FIGURES AND GRAPHS

FIGURE 1 – HOME-MADE CALORIMETER 11

GRAPH 1 – GRAPH OF WEIGHT AND ENERGY OF NUTS 13

LIST OF SYMBOLS

∆ : DELTA – ‘CHANGE IN’

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

The energy that the human body and brain needs to function ...

... middle of paper ...

...re various factors that have an influence on the amount of energy that food store within them. Some factors have a greater influence on this amount than others. Through the research it was found that the biggest influence on the weight of food is energy containing substances like carbohydrates, fatty oils and proteins. This is in good correlation with the experiment results, showing that the weight of the substance had a great influence on the amount of energy contained in food.

In the hypothesis, it was stated that it will be tested whether texture would have an influence on the amount of energy in nuts. The experiment was inconclusive in terms of the energy and the texture of nuts. Since there is not sufficient evidence that texture in nuts has an influence on the amount of energy contained, it is not possible to make a conclusion in terms of any food.

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