Preserving Meat

As my Science Fair Project, I decided to do a project based on how spices affect the time it takes for food to go bad. I chose this topic because I thought it may be interesting to see how spices affect the food.

Originally I was going to use cubes of raw meat, but, then I realized it would be less difficult to test and more cost effective if I used four slices of a loaf of bread instead. I put salt on one piece of bread, pepper on another piece, I toasted one of the slices to mimic dehydration and did nothing to the other so I could use it as the control. I placed them all in separate baggies and labeled them based off what the bread had on it. Then, I put them on the top of my refrigerator and checked up once every week for three weeks.

After three weeks of collecting data, I found the the winner. I based my data off of how much each contestant felt like the control. The one who was the least like the control, would win. The toast was the most like the control. It took a week to go bad. Besides it’s hard properties, I felt that the slice that I toasted was the one that went bad the fastest besides the control. The second place winner was the bread that i put salt on. This one took a week and a half to go bad. Although salt is known to soak up moisture it was not best when it came to keeping food fresh. Finally, the winner is…. Pepper. This spice took 2 weeks to go bad. It was a close call between salt and pepper i chose pepper because it felt a little softer then the salt covered bread, toast, and control. After the pepper went bad, i rated how each one looked and how hard it was. I rated the toast a 3 for looks and a 6 for hard ness. I also rated the Salt a 3 for looks and a 6 for hardness. And finally i rated the Pepper a 6 for looks and a 7 for hardness.

Overall, I think this was a very interesting science fair project. I had to make a lot of adjustments to my procedure and add some more things to my list of materials, but it was all worth it. I finally found out what spice keeps food fresh for the longest, pepper. Pepper stayed fresh a week longer than the control.