Creative work for context report

This is a bit of an update on a few of the more practical things I did as part of my context report. Above is a photograph of the patterned shopping bag that I made, to raise consumer awareness of where chicken comes from. The colours are pretty pastels so that a person might be drawn to the bag, but on closer inspection it shows abstract images of chickens in a slaughter house, and stacked on supermarket shelves.

To explore new ways of keeping track of healthy eating, I designed a shopping receipt that includes a summary of calories, fat, saturated fat, salt and sugar. When you pay for your shopping you enter how many days and how many adults or children the food is for. The receipt tells you what percentage of your guideline daily allowance is covered by your purchases. This example shows someone who has bought three days’ food for an adult woman. The food is low on sugar, but has too much saturated fat.

To investigate the problems of convenience food, I purchased a ready meal, cooked a homemade version, and compared time, price, ingredients, taste, and nutritional value. Sainsbury’s Basics Macaroni Cheese cost 75p and took 4.5 minutes to heat up in the microwave. It took five times longer to make macaroni cheese from scratch, and I had more washing up to do, but it cost 30% less and tasted better. The ready meal contained unexpected ingredients – water, cornflour, and rapeseed oil – and had 40% more salt, even though it was a smaller portion.

Sustainable Eating: Simplifying Consumer Food Choices

Just a quick update, as I'm very tired and am going to rest for a few days! Have been working very hard on my context report for well over a month now. I've sent it to be printed and bound today, then I'll be handing it in on Friday morning.

The title is 'Sustainable Eating: Simplifying Consumer Food Choices'. Please feel free to take a look, I'd love to know what you all think.

You can download the digital version here.

Food 2030

I've found endless amounts of information and exciting projects since starting work on my context report. But I haven't been putting it on my blog, because at the moment I'm writing the report, so it is all going straight in there! And I'll try to make some version of it available through this site, when it is finished.

However, I have just been reading about the government's Food 2030 food strategy (launched by Hilary Benn Jan 2010), and I am so excited by it that I wanted to put it on here! In terms of consumers, it describes exactly what I am trying to do with my project - and I find it encouraging that the food strategy describes a similar ideal. Here are some quotes:

Food 2030, the Government’s new food strategy, is the first of its kind in over 50 years. In it we set out our vision of what we want the food system to look like in 2030, and how we can get there.
Consumers: Find out more about food – how and where it is produced. Use their influence and spending power to support those who produce sustainable and healthy food. Waste less food.
Consumers are informed, can choose, and afford, healthy, sustainable food.

You can see the web page here.
I'm seriously thinking, maybe I should get in touch with them, and tell them I'm working on the same thing?!

Brixton Food and Growing Group December Newsletter

Pig Business
"Tracy Worcester's investigation into the factory pork industry and who pays the real cost of 'cheap' meat' meat" - watch the video on youTube here. It is in six parts, I'd recommend part 3. More shocking footage of the way pigs are produced by Smithfield (footage is from Compassion in World Farming). Lots of interviews with heads of companies, advisors, etc.
It does seem really wrong that we are importing meat that doesn't comply with our own standards of farming. There is a quote in part 6 from a farmer outside Downing Street - '70% of the meat we import doesn't comply with our own standards'. How can UK meat farmers compete with this?

Sustainable Development Commission report
This is a government report that looks into how 'Eliminating waste, cutting fatty and sugary foods and reducing meat and dairy will benefit health and environment'. see it here.

Fruit & Nut Map of South London
Found this map through the Brixton transition town website. Shows all trees with fruit or nuts overhanging or in public space. see it here.

All of these things came from the Brixton Food and Growing Group December Newsletter - thanks Michael for forwarding it to me!

Christmas Holidays: update

I haven't posted for nearly a month, this is because I've been busy working on my dissertation (context report) and celebrating Christmas! Here is a little summary of some of the things I've been doing and seeing.

Christmas biscuits and cards 2010I made over 100 of these little gingerbread biscuits and gave boxes of them to people as presents this year. The biscuits have little stained-glass window centres (boiled sweets) and can be hung on the tree or eaten! For cards I created a simple Christmas tree illustration and decorated it in different ways.


16th December - Unpackaged store, Amwell Street
I finally visited this store, close to Angel tube station. Everything sold there is unpackaged, organic and non-air-freighted. I chatted a bit to Catherine, who started the place two years ago. It was really interesting to discuss with her the difficult decisions she has to make about which suppliers to choose, where to source certain products and the possibility of selling meat there in the future. The place is small and quite expensive - but fantastic, and inspiring.

16th December - Free lunch, Trafalgar Square
Received an flyer for this event while I was at my local farmer's market. It sounded like a great idea! A free lunch for 5000 people - made from vegetables that haven't made the grade to be sold in supermarkets. (no idea why - they all looked perfect!) Despite the freezing cold temperatures and the first few snowflakes, I headed down to see what was going on. Also got a chance to see the 'ice bear' - climate change awareness thing - and the tree from Norway.

Got there early so didn't have to queue long for my vegetable curry lunch. By the time I left the queue was enormous (see below)! You could also queue up to get free groceries - fruit and veg. I talked to quite a few of the people helping to organise the event - but as it was such a big event they weren't able to give me very detailed information, e.g. which supermarkets and farmers were involved and for how long. Really interesting though and definitely worth going.


18th December - bread
This is the first loaf of bread I have made since the Bargehouse event - months ago, shameful! I decided to make white bread for a change, as this is supposed to be easier. I was so pleased with the results, I've included it on here! Definitely the most edible bread I've ever made.

Christmas holidays
I did take a break to enjoy Christmas - I think it has done me good. Above are a few photos of my holiday - christmas lights in St Christopher's Place (just off Oxford St), mum's christmas tree, my snowy train journey back to Devon, the christmas cake. Hope that everyone reading this had a lovely christmas too.

January 3rd - Turner Prize exhibition
Richard Wright won this year's Turner Prize - £25,000 to him! I didn't find this out until after I'd seen the exhibition. Above is the work that he showed in the Tate Britain exhibition - but not what he was nominated for. A short film at the end of the exhibition showed some of his other work. I've never heard of him until now, but I really loved the patterns in some of his other work. My favourite thing in the exhibition.