1. Designing Food Products
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For more detailed instructions, see the Getting Started presentation.
For more detailed instructions, see the Getting Started presentation.

3. Design brief

4. Mind map A mind map is a good way of recording initial thoughts.
must taste good
name
high fibre
fun
low fat
low sugar
low salt
Student
healthy
sausage
rolls
Snack
high fat
high salt
has to be carried
without damage
savoury
packed lunch
sweet
crisps
Packed in advance.
How to keep
it hygienic?
packaging
cake, biscuit,
fruit, chocolate bar
high in fat and sugar
healthy but
no design needed

5. Research
The first thing to do is find out about existing products that are popular with students.
A survey of what is in students’ lunchboxes would be a good start.
You could also find out about existing products by looking at their packaging and reading their labels.
The Food Standard’s Agency lunchbox survey (2004) results provide some interesting facts and figures on what is included in lunchboxes. These can be accessed from

6. What can you find out?

7. Design specification
A design specification is a detailed list of what your product must do.
Produce a sweet snack that is suitable for school lunch boxes.
As far as possible, the specification should be measurable, so:
‘Snack should contain less than 1g of fat’ is better than
‘Snack should be healthy’ or
‘Snack should be low in fat’.
Other things you might need to think about are:
production costs, production time, the weight of the snack.

8. Final specification A final specification might look like this:
produce a sweet snack suitable for school lunch boxes
snack should weigh approximately 50g
must contain less than 5g of fat and 500 kJ of energy
must contain at least 4g fibre
must appeal to the teenage market
packaging must be attractive and contain nutritional information
must be suitable for carrying in a lunchbox without breaking
must be hygienically wrapped
must cost no more than 20p to produce
one batch should take no longer than one hour to produce.

9. Initial design ideas You need to record your ideas for: recipes
production
shape and appearance
name
packaging
and keep a record of how these initial ideas change.

10. Developing a recipe
Your specification sets some limits on nutritional content for the product.
You can look in recipe books and at existing products to get ideas for recipes, but don’t just copy them, change them to make them yours.
For each recipe you will need to work out:
the nutritional content
the cost of the ingredients.
Next compare the recipes.
You could use ICT to help you do this.

11. Analysing the recipe

12. Aesthetics
Once you have some ideas for recipes, you need to start to think about how your product will look – the aesthetics.
You need to think about the product itself and the way that it is presented and packaged.
It’s important to think about the intended market; in this case, teenagers. What will your advertising slogan be? What will attract the attention of teenagers?
You should record all your ideas, even if they don’t seem practical – you can always throw out the bad ones later.

13. Mind map people music Teenagers computers sport clothes phones live
instruments
live
mates
MP3
people
music
romance CD
games
Teenagers
computers
Football
Cricket
Rugby
Basketball
sport
clothes
Internet
Skateboards
Extreme sports
fashion
chat/messaging
street stuff
dressing up

14. Rating the ideas – what do you think?

15. Testing the prototypes
This is the tough bit.
Now you have to cook the recipes that seem the best.
Even worse, you have to taste them!
It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it!
When you do the cooking, make a note of:
any problems you found
cooking temperatures and times
how long it took to make a batch.
You will need to ask other people their opinions too.

16. Packaging
You also need to decide on a name for the product and think about how it could be packaged.
The packaging needs to protect the product and keep it hygienic as well as look good.
You can sketch ideas and make models that look like the packaging you would like even if it isn’t practical to make the real thing.
CAD and graphics packages could help you with your designs.

17. Final design You need to write up your final design with details of:
the quantity of ingredients in one batch
how many portions from a batch
the preparation method
what equipment will be needed
time plan
health and safety requirements
how you will check quality
packaging, including sizes, colours and materials to be used.

18. Producing the goods It’s finally time to make the product!
Keep a note of any problems you had with each batch as you make your product. Also explain how you solved the problems.
You may find your design changes as you go along: if you’re cooking a large batch, you might find you need to raise the oven temperature a little, for example.
Test each batch as you make it, and be sure to follow all the health and safety rules!

19. Evaluating
Your final evaluation should look back at your design specification to judge how successful your product was.
Look at each item on the list and decide whether you met the requirement:
completely
partly
not at all.
Explain any difficulties you had.
How could you make your product better?
What would you do differently if you were starting again?

20. Summary