Title: Effect of blanching green vegetables with baking soda

Problem Statement: Some chefs recommend blanching green

beans, broccoli and other vegetables with a little baking soda
to keep them bright green. Chef John however, claims that
this treatment can destroy much of their nutritional value.
Hypothesis: Vitamin C is easily destroyed by oxidation. This
occurs due to heating, exposure to air and alkaline
conditions. Baking soda causes alkaline conditions which
breaks down the pectin structures in vegetables.
Aim: To determine if baking soda causes alkaline conditions
which destroys Vitamin C in vegetables.
Method: ​This method can work but you cannot use different
vegetables to assess the decrease in Vitamin C or different
amounts of baking soda at the same time. Choose one
vegetable and vary the baking soda. Keep mass or number of
discs constant and then compare.
1. Cut out 5mm discs of beans and broccoli (5 for each)
and two other vegetable of your choice.
2. Place each vegetable into separate boiling tubes.
3. Add one teaspoon baking soda for the first vegetable
(broccoli), then two teaspoons baking soda for the
second vegetable (beans), three teaspoons for the third
(cabbage) and four teaspoons for the fourth (dasheen)
to 10ml boiling water in another boiling tube.
 4. Pour solution into each boiling tube which contains
vegetable discs.
5. After a few minutes add a few drops of universal PH
indicator to the vegetables.
6. Observe colour change and record it in a table form.

Variables:
Controlled: Size of vegetable disc
: Volume of water
Manipulating: Amount of baking soda
Responding: Colour change after PH was added

Data to be collected (Expected Results)

Vegetable Observations
Broccoli Blue colour
Beans Dark blue colour
Cabbage Very dark blue, close to
purple
Dasheen Light purple colour
Treatment of results
In the experiment conducted, the baking soda was thought
to have caused alkaline conditions when it reacted with the
vitamin C in the green vegetables. The PH added, was to test
if the alkalinity of the vegetable would increase as the
concentration of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda)
increased. This was seen through the colour change from a
neutral colour which was yellow to a darker colour such as a
dark blue or purple. The more alkaline the substance, the
darker colours were seen or observed. Since this occurred, it
proves that baking soda creates an alkaline solution for
vegetables and causes the vitamin C to be oxidised,
destroying it. Also another observation that can be made is
how soft or mushy the vegetables gets which means the
pectin structures in the vegetables were broken down, thus
destroying the nutritional value of it.
Limitations:
Sources of Error:
1. Inappropriate measurements
2. Adding too much indicator
Precautions
1. Taking readings accurately to prevent parallax error
2. Adding the same number of discs to each boiling tube