Assignment

As part of the assignment for National 5 Health and Food Technology you must choose between two briefs. Once you have chosen a brief, you should identify three key issues and explain why they are important.

An ‘issue’ can be a problem that needs solved through investigation. It can also be a key word in the brief that would be useful to research.

You should be clear about what you aim to find out about these issues and then investigate them further to develop a dish (solution) for the brief.

Examples

• Brief: Develop a dessert product high in vitamin C suitable for children.

• Three issues: the product must be a dessert, must be high in vitamin C and must be suitable for children.

• Brief: Develop an oily fish dish to be included in a healthy eating range for a supermarket.

• Three issues: the product must contain oily fish, must be suitable for a healthy eating range and must be suitable for a supermarket.

• Brief: Develop a savoury dish for the school canteen which uses organic ingredients.

• Three issues: the product must be a savoury dish, must be suitable for a school canteen and must use organic ingredients

• Brief: Develop a lunch item for the school canteen that could contribute to the dietary goal to eat less fat.

• Three issues: the product must be a lunch item, must be suitable for a school canteen and must be lower in fat.

You should explain how issues are linked to the brief. For example:

“I must make sure that my developed item is a food that can be consumed at lunch time. I might explore school canteen menus to find out what are suitable lunch dishes. I might look at portions sizes and fat content.”

You are expected to undertake three different investigations to gather information about each of the three key issues you have identified for the brief.

You might carry out an interview, a survey, an internet research or carry out another form of research.

See: Techniques for researching health and consumer issues in the Contemporary Food Issues unit for more on research techniques.

Present your results for each investigation and make sure your findings are clear.

For each investigation indicate the key issue you researched. Make sure that the sources of the information are clearly identified, ie:

1. Web addresses - you need at least one.

2. Text book name and author – summarise this information.

3. Interview questions – a questionnaire should have 5-8 questions.

4. Who the interviewees were, their name, job title and place of work.

5. The number of interviewees who completed a questionnaire (there should be at least 10).

For each investigation, you must summarise 3 main points of information which can be used to develop your product.

Once you have completed the investigations, use the information gathered to come up with 3 different ideas for your food product. For each idea you must include:

A detailed description

This is not a recipe, but a detailed description of what main ingredients are in the dish, how are they cooked/prepared and what the dish would look like.

A justification

You should say why you think each idea is suitable for the brief. Remember to link each justification to the results of one of your investigations.

Provide a recipe for your final food product idea. It must be one of the 3 ideas you described earlier and based on the results of investigation. It must include:

• The name of your recipe.

• An ingredient list with quantities (use the metric system, no cups or ounces).

• Step by step cooking method/s (use numbers to display the order of steps clearly).

If organic or Fairtrade© ingredients were a key issue in your brief, make sure to identify them in your ingredients list, for example:

• 50g butter

• 50g Fairtrade© chocolate

• 50g flour

Your recipe must be accurate to ensure that anyone else recreating your product would achieve the same dish.

You need to justify why you have chosen this dish from the range of ideas you developed. Ensure you have at least 8 reasons for choosing your recipe. Check that each explanation links to the brief and to an investigation.

Justify your product using at least:

• 3 ingredients used in the product.

• 1 cooking method used in the product.

• 2 features of the product (something that makes it unique or different, eg, shape/size/organic/fruity/nutty).

It is helpful to use this sentence structure when justifying your reasons.

• Reason - "I have used chicken in my dish"

• Link to brief - "This helps me to meet the brief as I was required to create a dish suitable for lunch"

• Link to investigation - "As I found out in my first investigation, chicken is used in a lot o the dishes that the school canteen offers at lunch time."

Display the name of the test you are using. Preference tests provide information about people’s likes and dislikes of a product. They are subjective and help you find out how much your product is liked.

For example, a rating test, or a ranking test.

Include a description of the sensory test you have chosen and what is you want to find out from the test. Establish what measures are you going to use to ensure the test is a valid method. For instance, inviting at least 5 people to take part. 

State 3 reasons why your choice of sensory testing method is appropriate and why it will give you the information you need. 

Record the results of sensory testing. Make sure you include a key. For example, if you asked testers to use numbers to rate their responses, you could use a key similar to this:

1 - Liked very much

2 - it's good

3 - it's ok

4 - it's not good

5 - disliked very much

Display the result of your research clearly. A table is often ideal for this purpose. Remember to use only whole numbers to display results, eg, 3, not 3.4.

Draw at least 3 conclusions from your sensory test, for example:

• 3 out of 5 people who tried my dish scored “good” for texture.

• 4 out of 5 commented that the pasta was al dente and they liked that.

• 4 out of 5 people scored “dislike very much” for smell and some commented that a strong smell of garlic put them off.

The first stage of evaluation is to judge suitability of your product based on your research. It can be helpful to phrase your evaluations using the Fact, Opinion, Consequence approach.

1. Provide facts bout your product

2. State an opinion about if the product is suitable

3. consequence, state why this is important to the brief

Use one of the BAT words to introduce the consequence . . . (B)ecause . . . (A)s . . . (T)herefore . . .

Example

Fact - My pasta dish contains peppers

Opinion - this is good 

Consequence - because (BATS) investigation one found that peppers are the favourite vegetable with eight out of ten high school students.

Make sure you give 3 different evaluations, each must be linked to a different investigation.

Use the Fact, Opinion, Consequence approach to evaluate the suitability of your dish based on the results of sensory testing.

Make sure you include two different evaluations, using a different characteristic for each, eg, texture and flavour.

At the start of the brief you were asked to identify the target group for your product, for example, teenagers.

Use the Fact, Opinion, Consequence approach to evaluate how suitable or not the product was for your brief and for the target group. Make sure you refer to any relevant information that is linked to teenagers. For example:

My organic beef burger can be eaten on the go. This is suitable for my target group as my questionnaire showed that 7 out of 10 pupils who consume food in the school canteen said they prefer eating food with no cutlery.

Include two different evaluations.

Suggest adaptations, improvements or variations that could be made to your product in light of your research and testing.

Your evaluation must include two different comments.

Complete your evaluation by concluding how well the product meets the overall requirements of the initial brief.

Use the Fact, Opinion, Consequence approach to provide three different overall evaluations.