GoodGuide.com

An American website that analyses products and companies to find healthy, safe and green products.

GoodGuide aggregates and analyzes data on both product and company performance. We employ a range of scientific methods – health hazard assessment, environmental impact assessment, and social impact assessment – to identify major impacts to human health, the environment, and society. Each of these categories is then further analyzed within specific issue areas, such as climate change policies, labor concerns, and product toxicity. Currently, GoodGuide's database has over 600 base criteria by which we evaluate products and companies.

see the website here.
Very complicated - they have over 600 criteria that they use to assess products and companies.

Shopping Guide

I got an email from Compassion in World Farming - I signed up for their newsletters a while ago. Within the newsletter there was a paragraph on being a 'compassionate shopper'. It is possible to download a very simple pdf guide to labelling, and how to vote with your purse when it comes to animal products. I particularly like these receipt images - a list of which products are kind to animals in different supermarkets. This is the kind of thing I had in mind to help consumers make informed food choices.

The Story of Stuff

My tutor Rosario mentioned this film on Friday. It's a twenty minute film about consumerism. You can see it here.
I found it a bit overwhelming. There is a lot of information to take in, and a lot of statistics. It was interesting though... and it's making me think!

Film Week - You Are What You Eat

These images are stills from the short film that I made this week, as part of Quique's workshop. The film is quite slow - I think it would benefit from more locations and foods, shown for less time each. My aim was to make comparisons between environments where food is eaten, the people who choose these foods, and the aesthetics of each food.

My limitations included whether you could sit down in the location, how busy it was there and whether I could purchase something cheap and small enough for the camera composition. I would like to have seen more people in the clips.
The process of making the movie made me reflect on my project. I have begun to think more about the types of people that choose certain places to eat at. Can I design for these people? Can I design for these places?

You can also see the film I made this week here! (Vimeo)

Film Week (Quique Corrales)

This week, on my course, it is 'film week'. Quique Corrales, a film maker from Madrid, has come over for the week to run the workshop. On Monday he spent all day showing us many examples of short films, and some really innovative and interesting techniques. Yesterday, we had tutorials with him, and began to develop ideas for our films. We have been briefed to make a 3 minute film in relation to our territory of interest. Quique advised me that the macro setting on my camera is good, and showed me some ideas for how to use it. I've decided to call the movie 'You are what you eat', and it focuses on food choices, specifically in places where you can sit down and eat at lunchtime. I spent some time filming today in MacDonalds, Pret, Planet Organic, Starbucks and Burger King, as well as working on the title sequence and credits. Tomorrow I plan to edit these clips in iMovie. Everyone's films will be shown on Friday.

El Ultimo Grito workshop: future object

After playing around with and chopping up my objects in the workshop, I decided to make a utensil for serving soup that deposits hair into the soup. In my future scenario, where it is illegal to sell food in 2019, it can only be traded, a chef lends this to one of his rivals in order to steal her customers.
The topic of rivalry between chefs is quite interesting. I would never have come up with this peculiar object if I hadn't been restricting myself to the guidelines in this workshop. Feedback from my tutors was quite positive - they suggested that if I were to make the object again, the hairs should be more secretive and the handle bent differently.

Workshop with El Ultimo Grito

This week at Goldsmiths we are being briefed by Rosario and Roberto of El Ultimo Grito. We were asked to bring in three to five objects with a total cost less than £10. My objects are: a ceramic jam pot, a boot brush, toy soldiers and a fork.
The aim of the workshop is 'to create both objects and narrative contexts as one single outcome', in order to 'achieve new kinds of product typology that talk about possible futures, and the way we picture and interpret them right now.'
We must join together our objects, or parts of them, in such a way that they have a new, abstract function, for use in a specific future. The outcomes of the workshop should be a 300-word story about a possible future, and an object made for use in this future. The object should be painted white.
I initially investigated my objects through drawing and photography, and then started to think about the possible narrative or future.
It is important to me that I can relate this workshop to my final major project, so my 'future' will explore the life of a former chef, in a world where it is illegal to sell food, set in 2019.


The toy soldiers are too decorative for the purposes of the brief, so I've discarded them. Tomorrow I plan to slice up the boot brush, and attach it to the bent fork and jam lid. This might be some kind of serving device for food, or something which tests its value.

TED talks, Unpackaged store, BBC3 program

BBC3 program: Britain's Really Disgusting Foods

Unpackaged: This is a store in London that sells organic, non-air-freighted products, unpackaged. For example: shower gel, pasta, dried fruit, eggs, jam and more. You are asked to bring your own containers with you, or you can buy re-usable containers at the store. I plan to go and visit it soon! (42 Amwell Street, London, EC1R 1XT, mon-fri 10-7, sat 9-6) See the website here.

Thanks Jess for telling me about these!

Yesterday, I took a look at the website for a book called 'Hungry City' by Carolyn Steel, which had been recommended to me. (see it here) This then led me to watch a TED talk that she had done. I've never been to ted.com before, but I'm now hooked! (Thanks Michael!) I watched three talks:
Carolyn Steel - How food shapes our cities
Mark Bittman - What's wrong with what we eat
Louise Fresco - Feeding the whole world (pro mass-production)

It was also brilliant to be able to see the other side of the argument. Louise Fresco argues that if we go back to small scale, local food production, the farmers who currently produce supermarket produce for very little money will lose their income altogether.

Design is not a Survival Instinct

This week we have spent our time on a joint project with 2nd year students titled 'Design is Dead... Long Live Design!'
We were put into randomly chosen groups, and given a randomly picked design issue. Our group (Alex, Harriet, Henry and I) had the topic 'Design is not a survival instinct' and another group had 'Design is a survival instinct'. We spent the week preparing fliers, objects and props, and on Friday we presented our debate in the main hall. The aim was to win over the audience, which we did - 73 votes to 7!
The other winning teams were:
Design should not be for the art gallery market
Design is blue collar
Design is not context driven
Design is pollution
Design should be playful
Design should not serve industry
Design is a problem solving activity
Design should aid social mobility
Design is activism
During the week we made objects that went against survival instincts (e.g. food that stops you eating it) and screen printed t-shirts. I learnt how to make a flashing LED teddy bear!

Mass research... but how can I get involved as a designer?

I started looking at Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall as I heard he campaigns against the kinds of issues I'm interested in - Healthy and ethical eating. His site lead me to lots of really interesting and helpful information...

October 7 2009, Damian Whitworth interviewing Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall:

Would he ever eat a supermarket pizza? “Well to be honest I wouldn’t eat anything from a supermarket.” His Chicken Out campaign highlighted the conditions in which chickens destined for supermarket shelves are reared and caused a rumpus.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article6863257.ece

Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall:

‘I believe our attitude to meat requires radical reform – both an alternative approach to meat production and a return to some of the older, more holistic values of meat cookery. But ultimately the only person who is going to effect any significant change in the way meat is produced, sold and cooked, is you, the consumer. So it’s you I’m after, and your habits I hope to change.’

http://www.rivercottage.net/FoodMatters/32/MeatandRight.aspx

Quote from Chicken Out website:

The slaughter process is also a serious welfare problem. Shackling by the legs is known to be painful and distressing for the birds and stunning in a water bath is too often ineffective (the struggling birds may raise their heads and miss the water) resulting in fully-conscious birds having their throats cut.

http://www.chickenout.tv/39-day-blog.html

Organic Delivery Company (boxes of fruit and veg):

We stick by our ‘50/50 Philosophy’ - better for one of our drivers to deliver to 50 homes in geographical order, than for 50 people to head out to the shops. (Research by DEFRA shows that people travelling to the shops create a staggering 70% of all food miles).

http://www.organicdeliverycompany.co.uk/shopfront/aboutus.php
Why worry about food miles, when we are the ones creating it?!!

Article in Mirror: Jamie Oliver wins battle to stop Sainsburys selling battery-farmed chickens
By Alun Palmer 6/08/2008
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2008/08/06/jamie-oliver-wins-battle-to-stop-sainsburys-selling-battery-farmed-chickens-115875-20685624/

Organiclea

This company, on the outskirts of London, runs a service called 'scrumping', where they collect fruit that isn't wanted or needed from apple trees. They make it into juices, jams, etc. Their website is here.

Guardian article about Our Daily Bread

see the article here.

"You see it and you say, 'Well, this cannot be how it was meant to be.' But it still exists and it will always exist, and you are a part of it. And if you want to talk about guilt, you are guilty, because you are [part of the society] that it supports," he says. "You can try and be a critical consumer and so on, you can minimise what you see in the movie, but you will never be able to stop it - that's a fact. It's the reality of our society - I see the film as a mirror."

Quote from the article, Nikolaus Geyrhalter (director)

Food mapping

Today I spent some time exploring and expressing one of my interests - how far the food we eat has travelled. I looked at onions, pineapples, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers in three local shops: Planet Organic, Sainsbury's Local, and Tesco Metro.

Cucumbers: Holland (Planet Organic) and Spain (Planet Organic, Tesco Metro)
Pineapples: Togo (Planet Organic) and Costa Rica (Sainsbury's Local)
Tomatoes: Spain (Planet Organic, Tesco), Morocco (Tesco, Sainsbury's) and Italy (Sainsburys)
Peppers: all stores only had peppers from Holland
Onions: Holland (Planet Organic, Tesco) and Spain (Tesco, Sainsbury's)All these fruits and vegetables are good for you, but are they good for anyone else?
Can't we grow onions and cucumbers here?
I've never heard of Togo until now.
Maybe I should go to Holland to see where these foods are being produced?
I'm not sure what that would achieve.

Pushing and developing project: movies

It was hard to know where to start in order to develop my project this week. I started by looking through my briefing document, and decided to spend yesterday watching some movies I had come across in my search for resources. These were - 'Our Daily Bread', 'Super-size me' (both documentaries) and 'Fast-food nation' (more fictional). I found the first movie, 'Our Daily Bread', most interesting and helpful, even if it did make me feel sick.

The entire documentary has no voiceover or music - it doesn't comment on the images you are seeing. This can be frustrating as in places I wasn't sure what process I was watching, or what food was being produced. The movie is full of shocking footage of how food is produced today. Enormous greenhouses contain rows of peppers, tomatoes, apples, and cucumbers, which are sprayed by robotic machines running along tracks between the rows. Hundreds of thousands of chickens in a big, dark shed are collected for slaughter by a terrifying vacuum-like machine. There is horrifying footage of pigs, cows and chickens being slaughtered.

I kept thinking, I don't want to eat food that has been produced this way. But how can we ever know for sure?