MY CONCLUSION
The hypothesis of my study is that I believe that
vitamin C would be found only in the fruit and vegetable groups. I made this choice because in my research I
learned that vitamin C is found in fruit and vegetable sources.
Based upon my experiment I cannot
conclude that my hypothesis is correct, because I found vitamin C in eggs and
peanut butter. When I compared my
results to facts in my research, vitamin C was not supposed to be in these two
items. I did not have the experience to
make an adequate conclusion, so I consulted with Owen Fonorrow, Director of the
vitamin C foundation, (www.vitamincfoundation.org) with my
questions. After consulting with Mr.
Fonorrow, I have concluded that the test to determine which food groups contain
vitamin C is an extremely sensitive test to the presence of vitamin C; however,
I cannot rule out that the test could have been sensitive to another acidic
vitamin found in the eggs and peanut butter.
It is possible that the test detected the minute amount of vitamin C
that could exist in both eggs and peanut butter. I have ruled out the possibility that the test is a false
positive. I came to this conclusion
because my control group (water) did not report vitamin C as being present.
I believe that my experiment is
important because it is important to eat foods that contain vitamin C. Our body
uses Vitamin C immediately, but our body does not make any of its own vitmain
C. So you can see, it is very important
that we choose our foods carefully and that we do not consume a diet of just
junk food.
In assessing my study design, I have
found a strength of this test to be that it is extremely sensitive to the
presence of Vitamin C, and a weakness that it may indicate the presence of
substances other than just vitamin C. I
am planning to continue this experiment to determine what other substances my
test solution detects besides vitamin C, in order to understand why a positive
result was found in eggs and peanut butter.