Food Allergy Investigation

Group members:

Jessie Ellico Franks, Julia Gonzalez, Sullivan Braun Slavin

Mohamed

Chemistry

Food Allergy Investigation

Background Information:

Many products we use in everyday life are solutions or mixtures of several substances and include dyes to obtain characteristic color. A solution is a homogeneous mixture, meaning it appears to be one substance throughout even though it can be composed of many substances.Dyes used for foods, drugs and cosmetics (FD&C) must be safe for humans to eat and use on their skin. As you well know, people have a variety of allergic reactions substances which are ingested or placed on the body. A common type of investigation that chemists undertake is the separation of a solution, so as to reveal its constituent parts. Please watch the following video on common separation techniques before attempting this investigation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DAxYArKOOA

Problem:

Mr. Mohamed has a severe allergy to blue food dye which is known as Blue No. 2 or “indigotine”. Your research group must race against time to find out which M&M’s and Skittles contain this dye so as to save your teacher from a life threatening allergic reaction. Which colors of each candy can Mr. Mohamed safely eat?

Research proposal:

After discussing the problem at hand, and watching the separation technique video, Our research group decided that we should use the chromatography method to separate the dyes. The reason we chose to use this method is because it allows different colors to be separated from one substance without needing specific information about each dye (boiling point, density, or weight). Using a different filtration method would not work because the dyes are all liquid, and would not separate when they passed through filter paper, or when boiled (Distillation), or when put in a centrifuge, because we don’t have the specific information, (i.e. the boiling point or density of the substances) needed to use these methods as mentioned before.

Materials:

Colored m&ms

2 beakers

Pipette

Chromatography paper

Pencil or stir stick

50 mL and 2 drops of Water

0.05 mL of sodium chloride

Tape

Camera (for observation collection)

Google doc (for taking notes)

Toothpick

Procedure:

Drop the colored m&ms into separate dishes on a color palette

Fill each bowl with 3 drops of water, swoosh the m&m around until all the dye has been dissolved into the water (as shown below)

3. Next, remove the m&m and use a toothpick to transfer 1 drop of the dye onto a strip of chromatography paper towards the bottom of the paper strip so that when you put the strip into the water, the dye is just above the water line.

4. Fill a beaker with 25 mL of water and 0.25 grams of