Politics of Food
When I was in graduate school one of my teachers Dr. Peter Lunenfeld. told me something that resonates in my head quite often. He asked me: Have you noticed that the way people look in relation to their social status has changed over the last 50 to 100 years?
In the old days very skinny people was close to starvation, being skinny was a signifier of poverty. Whereas powerful people had a tendency to be bigger, fatter, big sizes signified wealth and health.
Looking at the current state of the world the above status-weight relation continues to change. More and more educated people with access to information and a comfortable income tend to be skinnier or try to be skinnier and healthier, following more natural diets. In contrast uneducated and lower income people are getting fatter and more sick.
There are plenty non-natural, mass produced, choices out there. Mass produced products that contain the cheapest and more profitable ingredients, are the ones that most of the people in the world has access to.
Over the last two months I’ve been thinking a lot about the politics of food: Market places are saturated with processed food rich in sodium, sugars and fats, combined with big advertisement campaigns, and sponsored by powerful companies. We continue to see an old, sad recipe…
The food industry is always changing and finding new ways to appeal to consumers:
A few weeks ago I discover in my office snacks’ basket a “100 calories” oreo cookies packages. I was horrified, my first thought was — the same ?f?o?o?d?, but in small amounts. So deceiving packaging ensures that people continue eating terrible, but just a bit less… every time. As long as packaging design ensures companies profit… the rest doesn’t matter, ?h?e?a?l?t?h? I’m quite disturbed with the smaller size / calories / packaging trend in fast food!
Deceiving packaging relates with human values, awareness, innovation and creativity, among others: Software packaging design, falls in the “deceiving packaging” category, just think about the amount of trash that comes along with them: big boxes that only contain a CD or a DVD…
As designers its fundamental to stop ignoring these issues and broaden our design perspective, as well as our attitude towards the environment and our bodies. Our ideas, products or experiences are a result of what we want to be, and, where we’d like to go.
Pretty, functional design is just not enough, we need to look at a bigger picture and have positive impact through our design work.
March 24th, 2007
