Cooking Away the Vitamins
Overview
Objectives/Goals To determine which of the three cooking methods, boiling, steaming, or microwaving, preserves the most vitamin C in vegetables, specifically, broccoli. These cooking methods will be compared to a control of raw broccoli. Methods/Materials To do this, an iodine and starch-based vitamin C indicator solution is made, which turns from a dark blue to a lighter blue in the presence of more vitamin C. Using different concentrations of vitamin C supplement powder in water, and adding a constant amount of each to tubes of indicator solution, five different colors from lightest to darkest blue are made. The amount of vitamin C in each is: 2.4mg C/ml water, 2.2mg /ml, 2.1mg /ml, 1.9mg /ml, and 1.7mg /ml. Four ounces broccoli is then boiled, drained, processed with 100-ml water, and the juice is strained. The juice is added drop by drop to indicator solution until it matches the color produced by the 2.2 mg C/ml water concentration, using the other concentrations to aid in the matching. A formula is used to find the mg/oz of vitamin C in the sample of broccoli. Data is recorded. This process is repeated with the other cooking methods and the control of raw broccoli, ten trials each. Results I found that steaming the broccoli is the best way to retain vitamin C. The control of raw broccoli had an average of 37 mg C/oz, steaming, 31 mg C/oz, microwaving, 29 mg C/oz, and boiling, 24 mg C/oz. Conclusions/Discussion My results support my hypothesis that steaming the broccoli would be able to preserve the most vitamin C in the vegetable. The main factors that cause this are the water-solubility and high reactive properties of the vitamin C. This knowledge is very important. In a society that is very much surrounded by health issues, the need to make our food as healthful and useful as possible, especially concerning one of the most important vitamins, is crucial.
Summary statement
My project examines which of three methods preserves the most vitamin C in broccoli during cooking.
Help received
Father helped give second opinions during some of the broccoli sample and indicator concentration matchings and ideas during one brainstorming session, research information was obtained from Mary Dalporto, a dietician, and Mary Tanga and John Mirsalis from Stanford Research Institute.
Competition history
- CSEF 2005
Resources
Related projects
CSEF · 2015
What Effect Do Different Cooking Methods Have on the Vitamin C Level of Broccoli?
CSEF · 2010
Investigating the Degradation of Vitamin C in Broccoli Utilizing Various Cooking Methods
CSEF · 2008
How Do Cooking Techniques Affect Vitamin C?
CSEF · 2016
Determining the Amount of Vitamin C in Boiled Broccoli
CSEF · 2012
What Effect Do Different Cooking Methods Have on the Nutritional Value of Vegetables?
CSEF · 2012
The Effect of Cooking on Vitamin C
CSEF · 2016
Comparing the Vitamin C Levels in Various Vegetables after Steam Cooking
CSEF · 2013
Vitamin C in Vegetables: How Healthy Are Your Veggies?
Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.
Browse more like this
Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects