Project for primary schools in Sheffield.

The School Food Trust are planning to carry out some research into children's perception of sweetness by carrying out a six week experiment in some Sheffield schools. In a nutshell project is:

Recruit 60 children and their families from 2-4 Sheffield Primary schools.
Children will taste solutions of water with small (increasing) amounts of added sugar or sweetener to determine at what concentration they can taste ‘sweetness’.
Following the taste test, half of the children reduce the amount of sweet foods that they eat. The other half will eat/drink as normal.
Pupils will repeat the taste test to see if their perception of sweetness has changed.

It will be a proper piece of research which will be carried out by nutritionist and overseen by a university.

This could be a fantastic project for a primary school as it will give the children a chance to be involved in real life science! The researchers will be able to give the children a real insight into running experiments and there will be lots of opportunities for data handling. In addition because half of the children will be asked to reduce their sugar intake this could make a brilliant class blog with children recording their reactions. There would be a real audience for this!

As the sugar reduction is in the name of science and the children will be free to return to their usual diet after the project has finished chances are most parents won't percieve it as too nannying or authoritarian.

This could be a brilliant project. Unfortunately it is only open to Sheffield primay schools otherwise I would have done it at my school.

If you know anyone in a Sheffield primary school please pass this link on to them
If you are from an interested primary school then email me at Jackieatmertonparentsdotcodotuk (my attempts to thwart the spambots!)and I will hook you up with the School Food Trust