Food Science

Invisible Lipids Lap Experiment

March 2, 2015
Group Members:
June, Thanatcha Jantanapongpun
Preme, Ravisara Karnjanolarn
Mind, Poonnapha Kittiratanaviwat
Kam, Pitiporn Prachayamongkol
Gam, Nichanan Suteeduangsamorn

Introduction:

Nutrient is known as substances in food that the body need in function of growth,
repairing and producing energy. Lipids are one type of nutrients that are an organic compound in
term of waxes, fats and oil. It can only dissolved in nonpolar solvents and organic solvents, such
as alcohol. It cannot be dissolved in polar solvents, such as water. Some lipids are one of the
essential nutrients, that is essential fatty acid. It means the body cannot make by themselves.
Fatty acid are made of hydrocarbons, at the one end combine to a carboxylic acid group (COOH) and another side combine to a methyl group. In addition, the long straight chains will
merge with glycerol molecule to make glycerol lipids. Moreover, the reason why fatty acid
molecules are saturated is by all the bonds are single, which general are known as animal fats.
The unsaturated is formed by a double bonds among carbon atoms, such as vegetable oil. And, if
there are two or more double bonds among carbon atoms, it will be called polyunsaturated.
Additionally, we can distinguish the fats to be two types, those are visible fats and
invisible fats. Visible fats are known as the fats that can see by naked eye, and they are solid at
room temperature. The visible fats can be seen in vegetable oil and fats in meat. On the other
hand, invisible fats are known as the fats that cannot see by naked eye, and they lead to add more
calories to us, such as snacks, cookies and desserts. In this experiment, we have to find out the
amount of lipids extraction in invisible fats by using acetone, which is organic solvents that fats
can be dissolved. Our group have to tested potatoes chip, which is always known that it contains
the amount of fats and add extra calories to our bodies. Other groups tested chocolate chips and
sunflower seeds. Therefore, we need to observe the differences, which type that these foods are
belonging to and how many fats are contained in these foods.
Purpose:
To find out the amount of lipid extraction in this experiment comparing to the amount of
lipid from the food label.
Material:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Potato chips
Beaker
Petri dish
Digital Balance
10 ml. of Acetone

Procedures
1.Weigh out 5 grams of potato chips and break them into small pieces with your fingers.
2. Label the beaker and the petri dish that you will be using with your group name, class
number, and food type.

3. Weigh the empty beaker and record this weight in the data table.
4. Make sure to zero the scale with the empty beaker, and record the weight of the food inside
5. Add 10 ml of acetone to the food in the beaker
6. Swirl for 1 minute in a hood in a well ventilated area
7. Carefully drain off the acetone into the petri dish, making sure that the potato chip remains
in the beaker
8. Add 10 ml of acetone again and repeat steps 7-8
9. Allow the acetone in the petri dish to dry overnight in a hood to visualize the lipid that will be
extracted.
10. Allow the beaker with the food to dry overnight.
11. Observe the changes the next day and weigh the beaker with the food the following day
12. Record the result in data table
Results
Data table 1: Extraction of fat from from food
Weight of empty beaker: 49.42g.
Food

Weight of
Food(g.)

Weight of
Food after
24 hrs (g.)

Weight lost
from food
overnight
(g.)

Percent of
lipid
extraction

Percent of
lipid from
nutrition
label

Percent of
error

Potato
chip 2

5 g.

4.77 g.

0.23 g.

4.6%

30%

-84.67%

Data table 2: Comparison of fat between team

Food

Weight
of

Weight
of after

Weight lost
from food

Percent of
lipid

Percent of
lipid from

Percent of
error

food(g.)

24 hrs
(g.)

overnight
(g.)

extraction

nutrition

Chocolate chip
1

4.33 g.

3.05 g.

1.28 g.

29.56%

30%

-1.47%

Chocolate chip
2

4.31 g.

3.31g.

1.51 g

31.33%

30%

4.43%

Potato chip 1

5.05 g.

4.25 g.

0.8 g.

15.84%

30%

-47.2%

Potato chip 2

5 g.

4.77 g.

0.23 g.

4.6%

30%

-84.67 %

Sunflower seed
1

5.41 g.

5.1 g.

0.31g.

5.7%

53.3%

-89.3%

Sunflower seed
2

5 g.

4.31 g.

0.68 g.

13.6%

53.3%

-74.4%

Percent Error Graph

-1.47%

4.43%

-47.2%

-84.67%

-89.3%

-74.4%

Analyzing Results
1. Compare the results of each group within teams and between teams.
All groups have different results, especially chocolate chips group in percent error.
Chocolate chips have a positive percentage which means that invisible lipids in chocolate chips

is more than the lipids contain in food label. On the other hand, sunflower seed and potato chips
approximately have the similar amount of error. They have a negative result which means that
they have invisible fats less than what the food label informed. Moreover, two groups of potato
chips have much different results because our group (Potato chips 2) did some mistakes during
this experiment. Between two results of sunflower seeds, there are little differences. But between
the chocolate chips are not different that much. However, the outcome between two groups of
potatoes chips are resulted differently. Group 1 have less percent error than Group 2.
Therefore, the result is depend on the processes during the experiment. For the example,
the amount the acetone we measured before swirling. The more Acetone added, the more
invisible fats extracted.
2. Describe the appearance of the fats in the petri dishes for each of the three teams.
Firstly, our group and another group tested the potato chips and the results showed the
same type of fats. We both have oil in the petri dishes, we only have an unsaturated fats.
According to the picture, they are oil from the chips - liquid around the plate.

Secondly, groups of chocolate chips had a different results from us. They havecrushes of
chocolates fat in the petri dish. Their foods contain saturated fats. The crushes are brown and
dried, and they did not stick together on the plate.

Thirdly, another groups which did the experiment of sunflower seeds have both
unsaturated fat and saturated fat. This group can be seen obviously because the oil are placed in
the petri dishes everywhere, they surround the small solid substances. They seem to be clear
liquid and there were brownish small dots. There is also some strain left in petri dish.

3. Determine which of the foods contained saturated and unsaturated fatty acids in
this experiment, based on your descriptions of fats in the Petri dishes.
According to the appearance of fats in the petri dishes, fats of potato chips are the easiest
to observe because it contains lots of unsaturated fats which the result appeared in a dish as an
oil. However, other groups who tested the chocolate chips had a different outcome of lipids.
Their results are solid crushes. Solid substances at room temperature is one of the properties of
saturated fats. Beside, for sunflower seeds, they contain both of saturated and unsaturated fatty
acids. There are solid substances in an oil placed on the petri dishes as you can see.
4. How can you account for the percent error that was calculate?
We subtracted the the percent lipids on the food label by percent of lipids by extracting
,and divided by the percent lipids on the food label again. Then, multiply by 100 to get an error

in a percentage. As we do the solution as shown on above, we could see that we get -84.67%
error. We should extract much more than 4.6% because the mistakes we did might lead to have a
large amount of error comparing to the other groups. We made a mistake while we were
dropping the chips after finished swirling the acetone with potato chips. We accidentally dropped
the large piece of chip in the petri dish. It makes our fats weigh distorted. Hence, compare to the
percentage of Group 1 of potato chips, our group - Group 2 of potato chips have huge amount of
percentage mistakes. The result of our group are differently twice to Group 1.
Conclusion:
This report help us in getting new ideas and knowledge about Lipids and its properties.
Some lipids are types of nutrient which our body cant make it by themselves. We also learned
how visible and invisible fats work. Visible fats can be seen by naked eyes, but invisible fats
couldnt be seen by naked eyes. In this experiment we extracted fats from different kind of foods
which are sunflower seeds, potato chips and chocolate chips. These different kind of foods
contain different kind of fats too. Potato chips contain saturated fats, chocolate chips contains
unsaturated fats and sunflower seeds contain both. We were trying to find out if the amount of
fats on the food label matches with the amount of fats we extracted. The results doesnt came out
so well because the little mistake we made while we were doing the experiment.
Almost all groups extracted less amount of fats than the food label. Only chocolate chips
group 2 extracted more fats than the food label. However, our group got the largest number of
error compared to other groups. We got -84.67% error which means that we could extracted
about 85% more to make it is similar to percent in food label which is 30%. We would get 25%
more fats in petri dish because we extracted only 4.6% fats of 5 g. of potatoes chip in petri dish,
but on the food label it showed that it contains 30% fats of 5 g. of potatoes chips.
For the next experiment, it dues to the mistake we did by not running the processes
accurately. Next time, if we get a chance to redo it, we will try to make its better by what we
learned. This experiment, we accidentally dropped a large piece of potato chip in petri dish
which may lead the result to be not accurate because the weight might changed. Additionally, the
weight we recorded might not be the real weight we expected. Next time, we are going to do
experiment carefully. Therefore, we would not make a little mistake, which messed up the result
of the experiment.