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Your mission is to grow, process, and digest four different food items. Does the type of carbohydrate matter?
In this activity, we will look at the carbohydrate composition of four foods. How does the differences between simple sugars, starches, and fiber determine how they are digested?
Driving Question: Do our food choices really matter?
Materials for each group
Paper Carb Chains for Potato, Kale, Corn, and Wheat, showing the percentage of starch, fiber, and sugar for each food item.
4 Paper Plates, pen
Tape or stapler
Scissors
Optional: Flashlight
Before starting, lets look closely at the chains.
Every blue hexagon represents one molecule of glucose, C6H12O6.
They are connected to each other with different types of bonds. Dashed lines represent bonds that humans can break with digestive enzymes.
Solid lines represent bonds we are unable to break, such as those in insoluble fiber. If we cannot break the bonds to free the glucose molecules, the glucose does not get digested to enter the blood.
Instructions
Instructions
Part I: Photosynthesis and Growth
Part I: Photosynthesis and Growth
Label your paper plates with the name of the food, Potato, Kale, Corn, and Wheat.
As each plant grows, it is manufacturing glucose and putting it together in different ways. Assemble the carbohydrates the following ways:
Starches: Tape or staple the strips of paper carbs together into one long chain, if needed. This can be end-to-end, or branched. Both types of starches exist.
Fiber: Keep the whole strand together.
Sugars: Cut them out in pairs if they are linked together.
Put each set of carbohydrates on the corresponding plate. You are now ready to process the food the plant has made.
If you want to go for the full analogy, shine a flashlight and breathe heavily during this process. The carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen being organized as glucose through photosynthesis requires sunlight (flashlight), carbon dioxide, and water (which you exhale).
Part II: Food Processing
Part II: Food Processing
What you need to know:
Each food will be processed differently.
Scissors represent the enzymes capable of breaking bonds between glucose molecules.
You can use the scissors ONLY on the breakable bonds. The unbreakable bonds cannot be cut.
Carb chains with breakable bonds represent starches and sugars. Chains with unbreakable bonds represent fiber.
5. Potato: We can eat potatoes straight from the ground with minimal processing. We do, however, cook them. Heat will break some of the bonds in the starch. Use scissors to cut 4 bonds between glucose molecules. Make sure you only cut the breakable bonds. Put the pieces back on the plate.
6. Kale: We can eat kale with minimal processing. Do nothing to process the kale. Put it back on the plate.
7. Corn: We are turning our corn into Corn Syrup. Add enzymes (scissors) and cut every breakable bond in both starch and sugar. Discard any fiber chains that contain unbreakable bonds. Put the glucose molecules back on the plate. (If you used an enzyme to change about half of the glucose molecules into fructose, another single-ring sugar, you would have high fructose corn syrup.)
8. Wheat: We are processing wheat for bread. Decide if you are making whole wheat or white bread:
Whole wheat bread - put both starch and fiber back on the plate.
White bread - discard the fiber, and put the starch chains back on the plate.
Part III: Digestion
Part III: Digestion
Congratulations! You are now ready to eat the food that has been grown and produced for you.
Carbohydrates must be digested into single glucose molecules or other simple sugars before they can pass through cells in the gut and enter the blood stream.
9. Digest the sugars and starches by cutting the bonds between glucose molecules.
10. Which of the foods would be digested most quickly?
11. How do whole wheat and white bread differ with digestion?
Food Rep
Food Rep
Your group has been chosen to be the National Food Rep for one of these food items. Which would you choose to "sell" to the public? Why? What are it's benefits and potential harms?
Think about:
Ways in which it is (or is not) associated with a healthy diet
Shelf stability of the item
How the same food can be processed or used in many ways.
Caloric contribution to the diet (think about caloric density)
Nutritional value of food, other than carbs. What does it offer in the way of protein, fats, vitamins and minerals?
Completing the Circle
Completing the Circle
What happens when the glucose gets into the cell? Together with oxygen, it is used for cellular respiration which gives our cells energy. This process builds carbon dioxide and water as waste products. And what do plants need for photosynthesis? Yep, carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight.
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