Monthly Archives: October 2013

Week 6: The research must go on!

Food Processing, Food security, Sustainable food resources

In the past week, our group has been discussing extensively on the revised research question. We are almost there and we hope that it will suit the requests of our community partner. We consider our most recent community visit our conference call last week. It is disappointing that we had to change our research question, but in the meantime we are putting the greatest effort in formulating a research question that not only satisfies our community partner’s expectations, but at the same time does not diminish our group’s academic interest. We have divided the FAQ portion of the manual among our group members and we have been hard at work reviewing articles of literature reviews. The FAQs for the manual are generally completed and now we are moving on to the science portion of the manual. Some of the hot topics our community partner was concerned with are the scientific background behind Clostridium botulinum and their strains, or the role of pectin in producing jam. We also explored additional methods of canning and assessed their safety and practical uses. Some of the interesting information we came across included:

-Lower temperature pasteurization of pickles (160°F for 36 minutes as opposed to 212°F)

– Pectin binding to water to only provide food structure in jams and jellies. They are not a factor in inhibiting microbial growth

-Sugar is not the sole factor in eliminating the risk of pathogen growth and inactivating enzymes in low acid foods; they are used for flavouring and colour.

-A very miniscule amount of botulinum toxin is enough to cause full body paralysis

-The botulinum bacteria are rod shaped organisms that are slightly bent and thrive in low acid, wet, and anaerobic environments

Our plans for the remainder of the week is to commence our in-depth research on the scientific background to ensuring the safety and viability of the canning process. We will then need to divide up each of the chapters of the manual. Once that is complete, we will then need to compile that and do an extensive edit to make sure that our new information well supplements the manual. Also, we need to ensure the language is at approximately a grade six level. As mentioned in the previous blog post, we have just had a conference call with our community partner. Our tentative research question is To what extent does educating people on how to can at home contribute to a person’s food literacy, resulting in improved food security with regards to personal health? Our focus group meeting is scheduled for the beginning of November and we need to have this done as soon as possible. Thanks for tuning in, and we will blog about our next experience.

 

Week 5: Research Proposal

Food and culture, Food Processing, Food security, LFS 350

Welcome to our 5th blog post!

Last week we received feedbacks of our written proposal and we got a satisfactory grade, which is encouraging since we had put a lot of effort into it. The feedbacks from Bryanna are very helpful. Here is a brief explanation of our research proposal: our original research question was how the Food Choice Kitchens canning workshops contribute to the improvement of food security in the aspects of food affordability and food safety in the Strathcona community? Today our group had a teleconference with our community contacts Diane and Shona to talk about and clarify our research proposal. However, after our talk with our community partner, we decide to modify our research question since the Fresh Choice Kitchens does not work directly with the general public; instead, they work with trainers who would deliver canning workshops to the general public over the British Columbia. Our new research question would be focusing on the need of “training the trainer” and how it relates to food literacy. Since we just had the conversation later this afternoon, we still need time to work on the research question as a group. Our research method will include literature review and discussions with a focus group. The method of literature review will produce reliable scientific information on canning processes for the canning manual. Second research method is conducting focus group interviews with trainers and possibly environmental health officers organized by our community partner to ensure the clarity and understandability of the added sections of the canning manual. So we could make adjustments to the new section based on their responses. By the end of this project, we hope to produce user-friendly material about the safety and science of canning that provides necessary safe home-canning information to the trainers of the canning workshops and increases the awareness of food literacy. Our research action plan is clearly stated in our written proposal, specific to completion date and work distribution. As Bryanna recommended, we would make our plenary presentation interesting and creative.

For the coming week: our group members are working efficiently on the frequently asked questions provided by our community partner by conducting background literature research, hopefully we would be able to complete the section by this Wednesday and start working on the new chapter of the canning manual. For our added section of the canning manual, we decide to focus on the science behind first two chapters of the original manual as suggested by our community partner and make sure the scientific information is clearly explained. Meanwhile, our group will also be putting effort on formulating our final research question and designing potential focus group questions. Today our group briefly talked about potential focus group questions including: 1) Did the trainers think the workshop and the manual is useful? Did the additional information on the manual increase their knowledge on food safety? 2) Which part of BC are the trainers from? Where will they hold their workshops? 3) Will the trainees from their workshops be able to apply the knowledge they gained from the workshop at home, i.e. do they can at home after attending the workshop? What do the trainers expect the trainees to take out from the workshops? 4) How many workshops do the trainers usually hold throughout the year? What is the average size of the workshop? What are the most popular workshops? 5) Why do the trainers hold these workshops? Why do the trainees attend the workshops? 6) What are the usual sources of the foods to be canned?  Are they from supermarkets, local farms, by donation, or self-grown? We will meet again on next Tuesday to talk about our project and keep each other updated. See you all next week!

Week 4: Proposal Presentation and Review

Food accessibility, Food and culture, Food Processing, Food security

This past week our group mainly focused on putting together both our proposal presentation and written proposal. We got answers to quite a few questions with regards to the proposal, with the most important one being clarification of what exactly our research question was going to be and what was expected. In the end, as a group we decided that in addition to updating the canning manual as requested by the GVFBS that we were also going to research about whether being taught how to can food would actually have any overall impact on a person’s food security with a focus on affordability. It became clear through group discussions that although teaching people how to properly and safely can at home is half the battle, having access to the required equipment for low-income individuals is just as important, if not more important. We felt that it was essential to look further into the effect canning would have on individual food security to get a richer understanding of food education/literacy and its relation to food security. As a result of this research question, we decided that while conducting a focus group on the usability of the additional FAQ and science sections of the canning manual, that we were also going to ask some questions about food security and its relation to people’s canning knowledge. One possible solution to this barrier that was proposed by our group was having sets of canning equipment at the GVFBS food depots that people could borrow when needed, as you only need access to canning supplies for short periods of time.

After reading last week’s assigned reading, Enhancing food security through experiential sustainability leadership practices: A study of the Seed to Supper program by D. Withers and H. Burns, the power of experiential learning to conduct positive change through physically engaging individuals on a mutual task was clearly illustrated. It quickly became apparent that the experiential learning that occurs at the GVFBS “train-the-trainer” canning workshops is essentially no different than what was highlighted in the Seed to Supper program. Both programs increase people’s food literacy and empower individuals with the ability to take food security into their own hands. With this in mind, the importance of producing high-quality material for the canning manual was considerably reinforced.

For the upcoming week, our main focus is going to be on conducting a detailed literature review to produce answers for the FAQ section of the canning manual. The FAQ that the GVFBS requested answered were equally split up amongst the group and are to be finished by next week. After our proposal presentation and having greater clarity on our research question, we became very aware that we were going to have to finish our updates to the canning manual relatively quickly so that we are able to conduct a focus group sooner than later. As we are going to require adequate time to work on answering the second part of our research question about canning knowledge and its relation to improving food security.

 

Week 3: Progress Report + Project Planning

Food Processing, Food security, LFS 350, Sustainable food resources

 

       Welcome to our 3rd blog posting! How time flies! Last week we had a 3-hour group meeting to distribute the responsibilities among group members regarding the written proposal and the proposal presentation for our project.  Amy Huang, Drew Bondar and Sophie Dong were assigned to work on the introduction, focusing on introducing our group members, our project, and our community partner. Bonnie Chan and Joyce Liao were assigned to come up with a brief rationale for our research question and to relate it to a broader picture. Jasmine Lee and Nathan Lee were responsible for the selection of methods to conduct this research and explain why these specific research methods were selected. A work plan was created during the meeting to ensure that the entire group is able to complete the tasks before the due dates and to keep up with the progress of our project. Even though every group member has his/her own responsibilities, we will still help each other to solve the problems encountered while conducting the project.  This week, we also received great news from Shona from GVFBS asking whether we as a group would be interested in participating a canning workshop with them to better understand the process of canning.

     As the proposal presentation and the written proposal are due this week, our group will focus on these two tasks at the beginning of this week. We will draft our proposal presentation and meetup to practice on Tuesday and Wednesday. Also, we are going to complete our written proposal two days before the deadline, so we would have time to proofread it. At the same time, our group will send our tentative timeline to our community partner (GVFBS) once our proposal is finalized. We are now in the process of conducting literature reviews for the FAQs regarding the science behind canning and how to perform safe canning. Academic literature research about FAQs is going to be completed by the due date of our draft (Nov. 5) since we plan to finish the FAQs section in the next two weeks and then begin research and revision of the manual. The valuable information obtained from the canning session will also be used to revise the manual and answer the FAQs. Once we get our draft manual done, we will conduct a focus group interview to test the clarity and understandability of the new sections produced, and potential participants of the interview will be chosen by the Fresh Choice Kitchens. After that, we will finalize the manual with regards to the responses from the focus group, and then achieve the final version of the manual and the answers to the FAQs.

Thank you for reading our postings and see you next week!