On Friday, January 19, 2018. Boy Scouts from Honpa Hongwaji’s Troop 49 from wore lab coats, gloves and eye protection to perform a food chemistry experiment using potatoes. They examined the fat content from various forms of potatoes: plain baked, baked with butter, French fries, or chips.

Using a top loading balance Scouts weighed out 1 gram of a potato food item. The food sample was placed in a mortar. 3 milliliters of water was added to the food using a micro pipette and pipet tips. Scouts mashed the food into a liquid slurry using the mortar and pestle. The liquified sample was transferred into a test tube and a chemical indicator was added. The samples were mixed thoroughly using a vortex mixer. All samples were collected and sorted from least red to most red. The red color indicates the presence of fat, so the Scouts were able to rank the food items containing the least amount of fat to the most.

They determined French fries and chips contain a lot of fat.

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