(Jake groans) Oh, Jake, you don't look so good.

Ew!

You gotta start eating better!

(Jake) Um-hum.

(Izzie) I'll bring you a salad for lunch.

Oh, no!

No vegetables!

I hate vegetables!

All 4 of us love to cook!

The menu today is collard greens and peach cobbler!

A lot of sugar!

(all laugh) We need to change this.

Our goal is to make them more nutritious.

We want healthy to be good and not turn people off.

(Izzie) I like this one too!

(Izzy) Major funding for "SciGirls" is provided by the National Science Foundation-- supporting education and research across all fields of science and engineering.

The National Science Foundation-- where discoveries begin!

(woman) Additional funding is provided by ExxonMobil.

(girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) ♪ We need you (girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) ♪ Come on!

♪ When I need help, and I've got a question ♪ ♪ there's a place I go for inspiration ♪ ♪ Gotta get to the Web, check the girls' investigation ♪ ♪ What girls?

(Izzie) ♪ SciGirls!

Whoo!

(girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) ♪ I need you!

(girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) ♪ Come on!

♪ You've gotta log on, post, ♪ upload, pitch in!

Yeah!

♪ Wanna get inside a world that's fascinating?

♪ ♪ The time is right 'cause SciGirls are waiting, ♪ (girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) ♪ We need you!

(girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (Izzie) ♪ SciGirls!!

[Jake groans] Oh Jake, you don't look so good.

Man, I'm really glad there's a whole Internet between us.

I don't want to catch what you've got.

I don't think stuffing yourself with Rancho Double Stuffed Cheese Fryballs is contagious.

Oh wait.

Dude, how many did you eat?

Ewww!

Do you know what those things are made out of?

Look, I'm reading the ingredients here, and I don't even know.

Jake, you gotta start eating better.

[groaning] Um-hum.

I'll bring you a salad for lunch.

Oh no!

No vegetables!

I hate vegetables!

If you don't eat vegetables, what do you eat?

Rancho Double Stuffed Cheese Fryballs?

Oh!

I'm gonna need some help.

SciGirls!

Wee-hee!

Girls, I have a problem for you to chew on.

Um, maybe.

Oh, that looks yummy!

Just the kind of mouth-watering help I need.

♪ ♪ All 4 of us love to cook.

So we go to other people's houses and try out our own family recipes.

My food background is southern food.

In my family down south, when you're tall enough to reach the stove, you're old enough to cook.

It's really fun to cook with my friends because they have more experience than me, so I can learn from them, and I can do more stuff in the kitchen, which is always good.

Everybody comes from a different background from cooking, so we just come together and bring our own ideas.

♪ ♪ Today we're at Claire's house, and we're going to cook some dishes that Bree's family likes to make.

So the menu today is collard greens and peach cobbler.

They're 2 very big dishes in my family.

Our goal is to make them more nutritious.

The taste of collard greens before you cook them are really bitter.

They're not very good at all.

One package of smoked ham hock or smoked turkey, lean.

We have one medium chopped white or yellow onion.

Salt and pepper, garlic salt, 4 to 5 bunches of greens.

Reduce heat to medium low boil for about an hour.

Yup, it needs a little bit more seasoning.

What's surprising to me in these recipes is, there's a ton of salt in the collard greens.

(Monica) I think in the peach cobbler, we put the whole stick of butter into the recipe.

That's a lot of sugar!

(all laugh) Uh-huh.

I'm an athlete, and I like to eat stuff that will give me energy on the court.

(Claire) My personal goal and I think everyone else's goal is to take these 2 recipes and really change them so that you can eat them without worrying about your health.

Now, the reward of tasting.

They're good.

Mmm, yeah they're good.

They're so good.

I love these, they taste like my Mom's.

(timer dings) That smells so good.

One, 2, 3.

♪ ♪ That is so good.

Mmm.

This is a comfort food.

It's definitely like if you had a rough day.

Just crawl up in your sweatpants and cry and eat this peach cobbler.

♪ ♪ (Claire) We started thinking about how we could make the original recipes more nutritious, so we went online, did some research, and found that they're really bad for you.

Sugar is 52.4 grams.

Oh my gosh!

Yeah, that's a lot.

In one serving size.

Oh my gosh!

Sodium is 6676 milligrams.

Oh my gosh!

That is a lot of pretzels!

(Claire) The core ingredients, the peaches and the collard greens, are really good for you.

They kind of get canceled out by all the other ingredients.

You guys, this is awful for you.

We need to change this.

Yeah we do.

Seriously.

We need to change this.

We've already made the original version, so the peach cobbler and the collard greens.

Now we should try to figure out healthier versions.

Our goal is to make it healthier, like substituting some ingredients, but not losing the general flavor.

So we want healthy to be good and not turn people off.

We should break up into teams.

I'll go with Akilah, and you 2 can go together.

So in our separate groups, maybe we could make like, 2 different versions of the original recipes.

Yeah, and maybe we could rate each other's, because cooking, it's kind of like you're gonna like your own food.

So you guys can rate ours, and we'll rate yours.

Why don't we try bringing a bunch of friends so that we could have a lot more opinions on our food?

I think that's a really good idea, Claire, we should do that.

So a taste testing, basically, at the end of everything.

Exactly.

♪ ♪ So we went online, we found this really cool scientist named Emily, and we're all really excited to meet her.

♪ ♪ Emily?

Yeah.

Hi.

Hi.

(Bree) Emily is a grad student.

She's worked with kids our age a lot.

So you ready to help us, because we need a lot of help.

Tell me what you want to do.

What's the plan?

We're trying to make an old southern recipe of collard greens and peach cobbler into a healthier meal.

I love collard greens and peach cobbler!

Maybe we could try to enhance the flavor of the peaches and the greens a little bit more rather than just kind of drowning the flavors out with all that yummy butter and flour.

(laughs) Let's shop!

Let's go!

Yeah, let's go.

(Izzie) Wow, look at all those veggies!

No Fryballs here.

Hi.

These peaches here are from Michigan.

These are a white peach, and it's from California.

Smell that.

What do you think we should do, Emily?

Yeah, which ones do you think we should get?

I think we should go for the ones from Michigan.

(Monica) Why?

(Emily) Because they don't have to travel as far, and the longer something has to travel before it gets to you, the more it loses its nutrients.

♪ ♪ (Izzie) Whoa!

look at those sunflowers.

Those are taller than me!

(SciGirls) This garden is so pretty!

Wow!

I can't believe that this is in the middle of the city.

Look at all these vegetables.

We've never been to this garden before.

What's the story behind it?

(Emily) It's a community garden.

(Bree) Oh, we found the greens.

(Emily) You guys made a really good choice choosing the collard greens because look at how dark green they are.

It means there's loads of Vitamin A and Vitamin K in here.

(Claire) So Emily, what made you decide to go into nutrition?

Well, I've always loved food.

When I was an undergraduate, I studied chemistry, and I was always writing my papers about carrots or caffeine or some kind of food-related topic.

After I finished my bachelors degree, I got a job cooking on a tall ship.

So I actually applied to the University of Minnesota grad school while I was on the ship.

Emily knows so much about nutrition and chemistry, and we're just hoping that she'll be able to give us that extra push forward in our investigation.

(Izzie) Let's go learn about Bree.

I'm Bree.

Come on in.

Tah-dah!

The room.

I'm like, a big makeup freak.

This is what my eyes look like before I put makeup on.

This is what my eyes look like after I do my makeup.

This is where all the cooking goes down.

This is my dog Sable.

Go lay down.

Back up!

Go!

(laughs) No.

(laughs) I play volleyball.

I've been playing since I was 4.

Got it!

♪ ♪ (Claire) Emily took us to this really cool cooking academy for kids.

So it was really bright, and it was really roomy in there, and it was nice.

We're just going to focus on each ingredient and what's really special about each ingredient.

Sugar molecules love water, totally attracted to water, so they'll just pull them out of the fruit.

So you'll get a nice sauce from putting sugar on, and that's going to be to our advantage when we're making a peach cobbler.

So collard greens; there's an enzyme in here.

When you cut the leaves, you break the cellular structure, and it makes a new compound that has a really better taste.

Is there a way to alter it so that it still has the same benefits, but tastes different?

Oh, that's a really good thought.

Well, I think that's where seasonings come in.

Why don't we break and do some brainstorming.

Yeah, brainstorm, SciGirls.

My stomach is growling.

(Claire) So we really want to change up this peach cobbler, and well, like Emily said, find different things that we could change.

Maybe roll it up and... And chop it.

Yeah.

So we're going to need to come up with some way to evaluate our foods.

So one of the ways that we can do this in science is to set up a survey.

I would probably ask like, what the texture is?

(Bree) We want to do a taste test because we are just basically trying to take the food, greens and peaches, and find out a way to bring out their flavor.

So we just want to start out with us and work our way up.

So how do you want to set up your peach experiment?

Well, we were thinking maybe experimenting with sugar and salt and seeing how the juices can come out with those two.

What about like, maybe an acid?

Like lemon?

Oh, yeah, lemon.

What are some other acids that we use in the kitchen?

Are you familiar with... Vinegar?

Yes!

Vinegar!

(Monica) We put lemon juice, we put vinegar, we put salt, sugar, and we just had the peach itself in like a control.

(Emily) So we'll try to retain as much of the texture and the color as possible, and try to get rid of that bitterness.

Okay, I think we should cook them all together.

Yeah, and then every 5 minutes we'll take a small amount out.

Yeah.

It's 5 minutes now.

Okay.

(clock ticks) Time for the taste test.

(low, resonant chime) I'm ready for the test!

♪ ♪ Can't see anything!

(Bree) Good.

What flavors come to mind when eating this dish; sweet, salty, bitter, sour, spicy?

Salty, and a little bitter.

(Bree) Giving the taste test was really fun because it was just fun to see what they thought without looking at the dish.

(Monica) When tasting the greens, it was interesting.

When Bree and Akilah remade it, it was more crunchy and dry a lot of the times.

With the collard greens, you had one big batch, but we would take out a certain portion every 5 minutes.

What was the favorite?

There was a tie between the version cooked for 10 minutes and the version cooked for 25 minutes, which is interesting because one is cooked way less than the other.

(Claire) All right Bree, are you ready for your test?

Yeah!

Let's go!

Then this is your nose plug.

The purpose of the nose plug is so that you can't smell what's on the peach.

Okay, good?

(Izzie) I'm good.

I got mine on.

Ready!

(Claire) So what flavors come to mind when eating this dish?

(laughs) It's like, sour and salty.

Not good.

Uh-uh.

It was really fun to do the taste test because it was fun seeing their reactions to the peaches.

(Bree) Okay, so what do you guys think was your least favorite?

The one with the salt.

For sure.

That was just horrible.

It was like oh my gosh, I can't believe I chewed it.

(Claire) You were right on the salt.

That's the one that was the least favorite.

The favorite overall, we put vinegar on it.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

(Bree) I think it'll be interesting to see how these recipes turn out as each of us experiment and find out new things about our dish.

Yeah.

Bye.

Bye.

Good luck!

(Izzie) And here's Akilah.

Hi, my name's Akilah, I'm 14.

(plays classical music) I like to play the violin.

That's my favorite thing to do, is play the violin.

I like to play softball.

I brought my cat Nadia.

I like to read, watch TV-- I'm a regular person.

♪ ♪ Bye!

We had our taste test.

We came up with some pretty weird results I'd say.

Do we want to make a graph?

Yeah, we should.

Let's put the highest number first, which was vinegar, which is kind of weird.

Emily said that we should just use like, 2 to 3 teaspoons of vinegar for 5 peaches, which if we can eliminate 2 cups of sugar... That would be incredible!

Today, Monica and I are testing our variations on the peach cobbler, and the first one was the granola topping.

That's pretty much all it is, is oats and nuts and dried fruit.

So my guess is that it's pretty good for you.

So we just made the granola that my family makes and put it on top of the peaches with a little bit of vinegar and then popped that in the oven.

(timer bell rings) ♪ ♪ I think it's done.

Tastes a lot more like peach.

Yeah, this is really good.

But it doesn't taste like peach cobbler, which was one of our main goals.

I have an idea for a technique.

We could grind some of these nuts up into a fine meal.

The second one, we made a nut topping with Emily and put that on top.

(Emily) So this is brown rice syrup, and it just is a little bit less sweet, and it's a little bit stickier I find than some of the other binders.

We put coconut milk in it just to make it juicy, and make it a little bit more interesting, and get a different flavor and see what happened.

(timer bell rings) ♪ ♪ It's an interesting flavor and kind of an interesting texture.

Hm, I like this one too!

Yeah, me too.

And I think our decision should be the nut streusel topping with the coconut milk and the granola topping.

Well, I think it'll be good to let the taste testers taste it out.

Hi.

I'm Claire, I'm 15 years old.

I've been a dancer since I was 3, and I love to cook.

I really like to use fresh ingredients from our garden.

This is my dog Oakley.

Hi Oakley!

Pasta is one of my favorite foods, and shells are my favorite pasta.

When not cooking and dancing, I love to spend time outside at my house.

(Izzie) Back at ya, Claire!

Today's challenge... collard greens!

That was a little scary!

Today, me and Akilah experimented with how we wanted to flavor the greens in a healthier way.

We learned from Emily that the longer you cook something, the more the nutrients comes out.

So maybe if we added some seasoning.

We could cook it for 5 minutes, which is even better.

We're gonna start it at 5 minutes, then we're going to add the greens.

(sizzling) (Emily) Hi guys, how you doing?

We were thinking to add more flavor, soy sauce and smoked paprika.

What do you think about that?

I think those are both really great ideas.

I think they'll replace the ham hock really nicely.

Are you going to serve them just as collard greens, or have you decided how you're going to serve them yet?

(Bree) We going to put them on a pizza.

(Emily laughs) Oh, good idea!

(Akilah) Everyone likes pizza.

(Emily) Everybody like pizza.

(Izzie laughs) Whoa!

Amazing, SciGirls!

♪ ♪ That's really good!

One thing I'm really happy about, the bitterness factor is gone.

When we tasted the pizzas, Bree and I both liked the paprika one better.

It's definitely sweeter than this one.

This one is definitely more bitter.

Yum, good job, you guys!

We were thinking let's just make 2 paprika pizzas, but call them different names and see how people take to them, and see how a name can affect how people like it or not.

So our next big step is to invite all of our friends to come and taste the pizza, and what they think of it.

♪ ♪ First thing today me and my friends are going to go to this test kitchen, and that's where we're going to do the taste tests.

The main idea is we're going to have the same pizza.

Just the names are going to be different.

Yeah.

Play with people's heads, make them think they're eating 2 different pizzas, but they're not.

Same thing, different names?

Tricky!

(Bree) So we will go with Pizza ala Tasty.

Then let's just put... (Akilah) Collard Greens Pizza.

(Monica) We're cooking and trying to get this taste test ready, but we have to get it done in like what, 1/2 an hour?

Okay, we really need to move fast here because people are showing up.

In the next room, we have our taste testers showing up, which is really, nerve-wracking.

I'm definitely getting a taste of the pressure of being on a cooking show or something.

We could use help kneading out this dough.

As long as our cobbler is in the oven, I'm fine.

We had this little tiny oven.

We put our cobblers in, and after I had put it in, I didn't really feel any heat coming out towards me, and I was like hmm, that's a little weird.

This has absolutely no heat.

Oh, my goodness.

(Bree) It's just like, warm in there.

(Monica) We planned the taste test, but I mean, there's only so much you can plan when you face difficulties like that-- that oven didn't work.

Okay, let's try to find another market, like another bakery, and see if they'll let us use it.

Everyone's waiting already.

Grab your things, and let's go.

Um, slight difficulties have led us to believe that we will not be starting this taste test for maybe a couple minutes... More than a couple minutes because the oven is not working.

Sorry for the delay.

We'll try to get it done as fast as we can.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi.

Thank you so much!

Thank you so much for letting us use this.

We owe you.

(Monica) When the bakery offered to let us use their oven, I think as a whole group we felt really relieved.

And so even though it was hectic, I think we did pretty well.

You're going to be tasting 2 foods and 2 versions of each food.

So be honest about what you taste.

Yeah, don't try to be nice.

(all laugh) If you don't like it, just say it.

1, 2, 3 go!

♪ ♪ Here's collard greens pizza-- do you want to taste some?

That's pizza A.

And try this one pizza B, Pizza ala Tasty.

What flavors come to mind when tasting this dish?

It's not really spicy, it's kind of savory.

Okay, so soft.

It's still salty.

Still salty?

The leaves are kind of, a little bit bitter.

Which textures come to mind when tasting dish A?

Kind of smooth.

Okay, so soft.

Chewy... and hard.

It's really soft.

It's kind of dense.

Which dish do you prefer, A or B?

A.

If you had to pick one, which one would you pick?

Out of these 2?

A.

A?

A or B?

Um, probably B. I like A better.

You like A better.

It was a really hectic day.

We were all running around, scrambling around and half trying to figure out what we were supposed to be doing.

We got everything baked, we got it all done.

So that was good.

(Izzie) Now let's meet Monica.

I'm Monica, and this is my drum set.

♪ ♪ Oh yeah, that's my Dad.

Hi!

This is my family's guinea pig.

And now we can go into the kitchen.

The finished product, Scallion pancakes--it's delicious!

Let's look over our data here and see what we found.

That was pretty interesting today, wasn't it?

Yes, it was.

It was kind of hectic.

It was super crazy.

(Akilah) 8 people liked the greens pizza, which is letter A.

6 people liked the Pizza ala Tasty, which is letter B.

(Bree) Which is surprising because I thought Pizza ala Tasty would be way above the greens pizza's numbers.

In the future, instead of having them taste it and telling us which one they liked better... Just have them pick it off.

Like if we made a menu, then we say which one would you like, and just see which one they pick.

The family recipe compared to the paprika recipe.

Sodium from the family recipe is 1926 milligrams, and the sodium from the paprika recipe is 366.

Shocking.

Not really, but...

But it's a good shock.

Yeah!

For paprika, the total fat is 8 grams, and the total fat in the family recipe is 43 grams.

So we didn't just accomplish this, we nailed it.

Yes.

So looking at this, it's kind of obvious that people really liked the granola topping.

Granola was picked as the favorite by our taste testers by more than 2 to 1.

I was a little bit surprised by the results of the taste test just because I thought they were going to like the nut topping better.

Because when we made it, we both thought the nut topping was better.

Better tasting and, yeah.

So I wonder what the difference was between us and the crowd.

The calories and the sugars and the fats were all decreased by a lot.

And we added fiber, and we added protein, which is important, and it's good that you get that in a dessert.

♪ ♪ So today we're at the Farmers Market, and we're going to be passing out our recipes and passing out samples for our peach cobbler and the collard greens.

In the end, we decided on 2 names for each of our dishes, and it's Peach Out... Peach Out!

And Pizza Ala Tasty.

Yeah!

Attention all Farmers Market shoppers.

We're currently having a cooking demonstration, and we're going to be giving out free samples of pizza and peach cobbler.

So come on over to the information booth.

I feel really good about what we did because we actually achieved our goal.

We'll show you some of the techniques we used so you can see how to make it at home.

We have some recipes up here.

People at the market seemed to really honestly like our food.

They kept on wanting more.

It was really rewarding, and we were all very happy!

Hi guys!

Hey, Emily!

Great job!

(Akilah) Emily met us at the Farmers Market, and so it was pretty fun to see her, that we learned a lot from her, and so we kind of applied that into our cooking today.

Thank you so much, Emily, you helped us so much.

Thanks for being such great learners!

(Claire) I think what I gained from this experience was really being aware of healthy eating, so that I could really change the way that I eat and the way that the people around me eat.

The things we did here, it really reinforced our friendships, and I think we're going to keep doing that in the future.

(Bree) We have that mentality, like okay, we're a team, we're gonna nip this in the bud, we're gonna get it, and we have fun doing it too.

So it's great.

Yea!

We did it!

We did it.

1, 2, 3.

(Monica laughs) Okay, so if you can't tell which ones have vegetables in them, you cut out the junk food and eat healthier, right?

You're not gonna fool me with this blindfold thingy.

I can smell a vegetable a mile away.

So yeah, it's a deal.

Deal!

Mmm.

Mmm...hey, that's good!

Mashed potatoes.

Nothin' wrong with that!

Yeah, except that it's mashed potatoes and broccoli!

No way.

Way!

That's one...next dish.

(slurping) Ooh, that's awesome!

It's a chocolate shake, right?

Well, it's chocolate infused.

Chocolate infused what?

(Izzie) Wheat grass!

Yuk!

Ugh.

Hey, hey, hey!

You can't take back liking it!

I know.

I know.

(laughs) That's 2.

Last one.

(crunch) Mmm.

Okay, it's good, tastes like an apple, but I know it has to be a trick.

It's got a spinach wrap or something?

Nope, just an apple.

Tricky.

I'm sorry little guys, I'm gonna miss you.

Oh Jake, you're breakin' my heart.

Ah, go ahead, eat it.

It's all about moderation, Jake.

All about moderation.

In my family, we like to make a lot of foods from all over.

What about that paradise salad that you were talking about that one time?

(Claire) We make that a lot.

You just find a bunch of canned vegetables and throw it all together.

(Akilah) My food background is somewhat southern, but then we like to eat a lot of pizza and chili and different stuff like that.

What about you, Monica?

We make Chinese food in general, and one of them is called cao you bing, and it's basically like a Chinese pancake I would call, and it's super delicious.

Our investigation is about rescue robots.

We wanted to give the robot human personality traits.

(computerized voice) Hello SciGirls!

(all) Robots!

We went star gazing, and we couldn't see many stars.

(woman) Light pollution is actually a really big environmental problem.

Star party!

(all laugh) Let's scuba!

We both became interested in the health of the reefs, and it became this full-on investigation.

I used to think being a scientist was wearing a lab coat.

It's going to be really cool.

(Izzy) Major funding for "SciGirls" is provided by the National Science Foundation-- supporting education and research across all fields of science and engineering.

The National Science Foundation-- where discoveries begin!

(woman) Additional funding is provided by ExxonMobil.

♪ ♪