What is Food & Eating Design?
The Food & Eating Design Lab brings together designers and researchers with stakeholders in agriculture, the food industry, the hospitality sector, health professionals and any others who try to improve people’s interactions with their daily foods.
Our aim is to provide design solutions that promote people’s health and subjective wellbeing, while at the same time keeping an eye on the profitability for commercial parties involved, the designs’ impact on the physical environment and on processes in society at large.
Eating food is part of everyone’s everyday life. Nonetheless, the agricultural and food production sector is facing many challenges in order to provide the world population with a safe, wholesome, and sustainable food supply. Restaurants try to offer good quality and attractive products often in highly competitive markets, while consumers in affluent societies may struggle to compose a healthy diet for themselves and their family members, while being continuously surrounded and seduced by many unhealthy options. These are just a few examples showing that food consumption issues could benefit from innovative thinking and design solutions to face these important everyday challenges. However, the contribution of designers to innovation in the food sector thus far seems to be relatively small. Up to now, the food industry seems quite unfamiliar with the ways in which designers operate and may be unaware of the added value they may have.
The Food & Eating Lab hopes to connect designers with all stakeholders, to increase the innovative potential of the food sector, to tackle the many relevant societal themes, including sustainability (agricultural production, waste disposal) and health (obesity, diabetes). In addition, sharing food has the potential to bridge gaps between people and can play a role in facilitating social interactions, both in a business environment (e.g., teambuilding, enhancing the chance of successful cooperation) and in private life (e.g., multicultural integration in cities).