• Question: what do you all teach people i your lessons?

    Asked by harvey2000 to Duncan, Grant, Julie, Nik, Rachel on 15 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Rachel Edwards-Stuart

      Rachel Edwards-Stuart answered on 15 Mar 2013:

      I teach them about proteins, fats, and carbohydrates and what happens to these food groups when you heat and process them. We then move onto ingredients like eggs, meat, flour and dairy products. I make the classes very interactive, so we cook eggs and meat at different temperatures in the water bath, we whip cream to make butter, and we make breads using different flours and different amounts of yeast. We tend to make quite a lot of mess, but it really helps them understand.

    • Photo: Duncan Gaskin

      Duncan Gaskin answered on 15 Mar 2013:

      Sometimes I go into schools and teach about science. I’ll get the children to do an experiment like getting DNA from strawberries or showing the difference between taste and flavour. These are great fun and sometimes a bit messy.

      Also I get to teach PhD students how to do things needed for their research like growing bacteria safely.

      All of these are great fun!

    • Photo: Grant Campbell

      Grant Campbell answered on 15 Mar 2013:

      I mostly teach engineers, and I mostly teach about heat and pressure, which are very useful things to know about, for all sorts of reasons including food science. One of the things we obviously do with food is cook it – knowing about heat is useful for that. Meanwhile, pressure is relevant to lots of things including, for example, popcorn – when you heat it, water turns into steam, which causes pressure, which is what causes popcorn to explode.

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