Integrating Food Chemistry into Curriculum
Welcome to the MACTLAC Food Breakout Session
About the workshop leader Sunil Malapati, PhD
Dr. Sunil Malapati, associate professor of biochemistry at Clarke, developed a fascination with food early on and cultivated an expertise during the past decade. In addition to conducting multiple cooking shows in Dubuque as a chef trained in South Indian cuisine, Sunil developed and continues to teach a course in food chemistry as a way to introduce science to non-science students. He is the principal organizer of the NSF-sponsored cCWCS workshops on food chemistry for faculty from across the nation. He has also done presentations and mini-workshops at national conferences. Sunil developed the curriculum for the Food Science degree at Clarke University and is currently overseeing its deployment. His current research interests include food authentication and the science behind the development of cuisine, especially the influence of history and geography and the incorporation of new foods.
Dr. Malapati has a Masters in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai and a doctorate in Biology from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. His thesis work was on signaling in the immune system. He currently teaches biochemistry, food chemistry and chemistry for health sciences. His educational pedagogy focus is on technology-enabled discovery-based learning in the classroom.
Workshop Overview
Exploring Chemistry through food makes science fun and approachable to a Liberal Arts student. Further, it provides a chemist with an endless array of day-to-day examples to teach chemical concepts. Cooking may be the oldest and most widespread application of chemistry and recipes may be the oldest practical result of chemical research. The role of chemistry in the kitchen has been the subject of numerous TV shows and books and has inspired chefs to come up with innovative techniques based on solid chemical principles. Several Chemistry faculty in turn have integrated food into their chemistry courses.
The NSF-sponsored “Chemistry Collaborations, Workshops & Communities of Scholars” (www.ccwcs.org) has funded the week-long Food Chemistry workshops at Clarke University for several years. Demonstrations, class-room and laboratory activities have been developed and shared during these workshops. During the MACTLAC workshop, we hope to present an array of activities that may be utilized across the curriculum.
Density
- A simple classroom demonstration will be followed by experimental techniques to determine sugar content using density and refractometry.
Osmosis and Mole concepts
- A simple classroom demo involving gummy bears is the starting point to teach concentration, molarity and equivalents.
Taste Modifiers: Miracle berries and Gymnema sylvestre
- Concepts such as agonist and antagonist are important in biochemical signaling and medicinal chemistry, but hard to explain. These simple taste tests will provide a dramatic way to elucidate the concepts and will also involve acid-base equilibria.
Acid-Base Chemistry
- Classroom demos involving baking reactions and these can be extended to lab experiments.
- A simple experiment involving whipping egg whites illuminates concepts involving acid-base equilibria, redox equilibria and colloidal dispersions.
Sous-vide Cooking
- If cooking is time x temperature, one can take time out of the equation by carefully controlling temperature. Constant temperature water baths at multiple temperatures will show a range of textures in eggs, chicken and beef samples.