Science Fair Project

SCIENCE FAIR PROJECT

This year my school is having a Science fair. My idea is to see if a gluten free diet will help with school work. I have been on a gluten free diet for 2 months. During the school week I eat a gluten free diet and eat whatever I want on weekends. I am doing the same Math problems on the weekend and then again during the week, to see if the results are different.

What is Gluten?

What is gluten?

If you are wondering, "what the heck is gluten". Well, this is what you want to be reading. Doing this project, I have learned lots about gluten. These are the things that really  caught my attention.

• Gluten is in wheat, rye, oats, barley, and malt.
• Gluten is the "glue" that holds foods together.
• Gluten can not dissolve in water.
• It comes from the endosperm, largest part of the seed, of the grain.

Gluten on your brain

Gluten sensitivity can effect your nervous system (your brain).
symptoms:

• difficulty staying on task
• memory disfunction 

Your brain dislikes when your immune system makes antibodies and responds negatively.

What gluten does to you?

1% percent of American's are gluten sensitive

Celiac Disease (sound out like silly-ack.)

• Celiac disease makes your antibodies come to fight the poison or better known as gluten.
• They make antibodies that break down tiny hairs in your intestine (called villi)
• Celiac disease is a autoimmune disease, NOT a allergies and is not contagious.
• Celiac disease may run in your family if you have it .( The word for that is genetic.)
• Symptoms of Celiac disease: 
•  stomachaches
• need to go to the bathroom a lot
• crabby
• tired
• Celiac disease was discovered in  Holland during World War ||. There were lots of kids who were  sick. During the war there was a wheat shortage and later, the kids got better. 

Non-celiac gluten sensitivity

• You would have the same symptoms of Celiac disease but the doctors test come out negative (which means you don't have it.) 
• The only way to figure this out is to go on a gluten free diet.
• This is not an autoimmune  disease.
• Does not cause permanent damage.

Wheat allergy 

• This is like if someone has a peanut allergy.

Cookie Project

When  I thought of this project, I thought "I have to test it on my class!"
 So, of course, I did.
What I did was make two kinds of cookies, cookie A(gluten free) and cookie B (not gluten free)

COOKIES USED:
Betty  Crocker gluten free chocolate chip cookie mix and regular Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookie mix

Cookie A: gluten free cookie
voted best looks

                                             Cookie B: not gluten free cookie
                                             voted best smell

Most of the class liked cookie B more than cookie A. But there was not that much of a difference, it was just one more person that liked B more than A!

Extracting gluten lab

LAB 
 you will need:
Flour,warm water, cheese cloth,and a bowl. 
Extract the gluten in flour. by squeezing on the cloth in the bowl of warm water. After the bumps are gone from the goo, you can stop   squeezing at the cloth and take the watery flour out if the cheese cloth(CARFUL it is sticky!) If you can't get it all off,put the open cheese cloth and get the the goo off as best as you can! After 5 to 10 minutes you have washed away all the starch from flour!

1.  Place 1 cup of flour in the middle of cheese cloth.

2. Place the cheese cloth and flour in a bowl of warm water.

3.Squeeze the flour until all the bumps are gone.

4. This is what it looks like. Everything put the gluten is left.

5. Form into a ball. This is very sticky because gluten is the glue that holds food together.

6. This is what it should look when it is done!

The way this works is that gluten is a molecule that has a protein thats made up of amino acids. So, with the energy from squeezing it makes the proteins stick together to form a sticky, messy, thing. When making bread, you use yeast.It provides bubbles of carbon dioxide (air),the carbon dioxide makes the bread rise. Without gluten, the air will escape and you will have flat, hard bread. 

Test 1

2/5 Diet:

Breakfast
Cheerios
milk

Lunch
peanut butter & jelly sandwich
potato chips

Snack
Triscuits

Number of times distracted while completing worksheet: 6

Time to complete worksheet:13:25









2/9 Diet:
Breakfast
Vans gluten free waffles
Mrs. Butterworth's syrup

Lunch
Progresso gluten free New England clam chowder
black berries
apple sauce
peanut butter Balance bar




Number of times distracted while completing worksheet: 0

Time to complete worksheet:15:45

Test 2

2/12 Diet:

Breakfast

Cheerios

milk

hot co co mix

strawberry's

Lunch

peanut butter & jelly sandwich

Number of times distracted while completing worksheet: 3

Time to complete worksheet: about 13:00

2/17 Diet:

Breakfast

Vans gluten free waffles

Mrs. Butterworth's syrup

snack

peanut butter energy bar

Lunch

Progresso gluten free New England clam chowder

Number of times distracted while completing worksheet: 0

Time to complete worksheet: about 15:00

Test 3

Diet 2/26
Breakfast
Cheerios

chocolate covered donut

Lunch

mashed potatoes 

burger with bun

snack:

pizza

Time to complete worksheet:7:01
Distractions: 2

Diet 2/28

Breakfast

vans gluten free waffles

syrup

snack

peanut butter energy bar

Lunch

New England claim chowder

Time to complete worksheet:12:00

Distractions: 0