SON GCE Portfolio

You may have heard the acronym ‘GMOs’ thrown around before, but do you know what it means? GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organisms. A GMO is a plant, animal, microorganism or other organism whose genetic makeup has been modified using genetic engineering . This process creates combinations of plant, animal, bacterial and viral genes that do not occur in nature. Over the past few years, there have been several debates about the safety of Genetically Modified crops (GM crops). Some groups argue that GM crops are an important contribution to the world’s growing population. Other groups are concerned that GM crops degrade the health of humans, animals, and the planet. In this FOOD unit, the class studied both sides of the GM crop argument and had to choose a side for themselves - anti-GMO or pro-GMO. I am in the anti-GMO camp, and I would like to tell you why. You should know that someone has been messing with your food. Many of the products consumed on a daily ...

INTRODUCTION In the second unit of Food For Thought (Death), we learned about things that have and can lead to the decline of crops. For example, the Irish Potato Famine was caused by a fungal potato infection that wiped out the entire crop. The reason the potato crop had little chance of surviving was because it was a monoculture - a prolonged crop of one specific species of plant. For this action project, I was given a choice of a threat to write about that could affect our global food system. I chose to write about climate change, which, unfortunately, has become a source of many problems across several subjects. Not just from the present, but from the past, as well. Over the course of history, climate change has affected crops. Learn how, over time, natural disasters, such as droughts, rising air temperatures, and flooding, have ruined the agriculture of food. —————— Look out…your food has stopped growing. Cherry trees have been suffering from blooming either too early or ...

What makes dough rise? When you combine ingredients to make bread, the dough appears to, magically, double in size! How does this happen? Separated, these ingredients aren't very exciting. When combined (with the addition of heat), they transform to create a soft, fluffy, delicious loaf of bread. Yum! According to the Law of Conservation of Mass,  matter can be neither created nor destroyed. In other words, the mass of an object or, in this case, the collection of objects, never changes, no matter how the parts are rearranged ("Conservation of Mass"). Chemical reactions take place and transform the ingredients. In a bread recipe, the active ingredient is the leavening  agent. The leavening agent is what makes your dough expand and 'rise'. In our FOOD course, we have been learning about the science of food. I never really thought of food as science before, but it is. Think about it...growing food is Biology, and cooking food is Chemistry. The main focus of thi...