CORVALLIS, Ore. — If you eat potatoes, carrots and wheat for a meal and then some strawberries for dessert, you’ve just consumed 78 gallons of water footprint and 634 grams of carbon footprint. That’s like filling up a bathtub and spending one minute on a school bus.
This comparison comes from the Food Calculator, an interactive website designed by six Oregon State University seniors in the College of Engineering. Their goal? Help elementary and middle school children understand how their food choices affect both their health and the environment.
“I really hope that they grow in their heart of service and be a scholar who cares for human health and planet health in action.”
The project — led by Siew Sun Wong, professor in the College of Health and nutrition specialist with the Oregon State University Extension Service — is the second iteration of the calculator, which began as a capstone project since September 2023. This year’s team — Anastasiia Ragozina, Aaron Underhill, Charissa Kau, Leo Samargandi, Taryn Eng and Yaire Aguilar Carrion — took the foundation and brought it to life with interactive features, colorful graphics and accessibility improvements.
“The star of this whole project is how we’re able to incorporate all three topics: nutrition, carbon footprint and water footprint, into one platform, which makes it different from other existing apps,” said Aguilar Carrion. “We want it to be something all in one place for children to go and look into.”
Coding an accessible tool for kids
According to Wong and the team’s research, most existing nutrition websites focus only on calories and nutrients. But the Food Calculator stands out by combining nutrition facts with environmental impact, offering a fuller picture of how what we eat affects the planet. Kids using the tool can calculate the carbon and water footprints of their favorite meals and even play a ranking game to test their knowledge.
Carbon and water footprints, as Wong explained, are how much greenhouse gas and water a certain type of food requires from the farm all the way to our plate, “so the higher the carbon and water footprint, the bigger the damage to our planet,” she said.
Underhill said making this calculator more kid-friendly means paying close attention to the colors and layout of the site’s results page. Wong, who has worked with kids in nutrition research for decades, guided the team through weekly feedback sessions.
“I got to think about things like how to make buttons accessible to children with color blindness,” said Underhill. “We added shadow effects on hover and labels on all buttons. Small things like that made us more mindful of who we’re interacting with.”
In March, the students tested the prototype with about 18 kids aged 7 to 9 years old from OSU’s KidSpirit program. The results were illuminating.
“We found that children don’t like big chunks of text — they skim or ignore them,” Underhill said. “But when we added the game feature, all the kids got super obsessed with it.”
That feedback led to important design decisions, like simplifying language, adding playful visuals and keeping the tone encouraging.
“We make sure not to push children into any painful things to restrict their eating,” Aguilar Carrion said. “We’re just trying to make them more conscious about their food choice, but not to feel any guilt.”
From classroom to community impact
The team’s passion for sustainability and education was clear throughout the year-long project. Underhill, who is from The Dalles, said he chose this capstone because it aligned with his interests in sustainability. Aguilar Carrion, a first-generation college student from Eugene and the eldest daughter in her Mexican family, said working on something meaningful was essential.
“I want to make sure that what I’m doing is actually being helpful for the people instead of just creating some lines of code,” Aguilar Carrion said. “So, I like how this project has a mission goal and makes me feel there’s a purpose in doing it.”
Wong said that she hopes to instill a sense of purpose in all students she mentors through academia and the Extension Service.
“I would like to inspire them and create that opportunity for them to see the direct application of their work to the children and the community,” she said. “These are the students who picked to work with me because they have this passion to serve.”
The calculator project stems from a broader nutrition education initiative funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Wong hopes to integrate the tool into OSU Extension’s programs, including her nutrition playground project that uses storytelling and games to teach healthy habits.
There’s still more work to be done. Based on the feedback the team got from the audience at presentations, they compiled a list of future improvements for the next group of capstone students. For example, expanding the calculator’s food database beyond its current 25 items, including more culturally diverse foods. They also want to build a glossary to explain key terms like “carbon footprint” and “water footprint” and create lesson plans to help educators use the tool.
Wong looks forward to continuing the collaboration, which she says is only possible because of OSU Extension’s cross-department support.
“People at the Extension and Engagement Division are so willing to share resources and support one another, and this is precious for OSU,” she said. “I hope to see this continue to grow, especially where we get to integrate the non-Extension people like the Computer Science capstone teams, so that they get inspired and get to see all this being done in action in the community.”
As for the six graduates, Wong added her wish and message.
“I really hope that they grow in their heart of service and be a scholar who cares for human health and planet health in action,” she said.
