Transdisciplinary Case Studies on Design for Food and Sustainability 0128178213, 9780128178218

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TRANSDISCIPLINARY CASE STUDIES ON DESIGN FOR FOOD AND SUSTAINABILITY

Woodhead Publishing Series in Consumer Science and Strategic Marketing

TRANSDISCIPLINARY CASE STUDIES ON DESIGN FOR FOOD AND SUSTAINABILITY Edited by

SONIA MASSARI Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy ISIA Rome Design, Rome, Italy

An imprint of Elsevier

Woodhead Publishing is an imprint of Elsevier The Officers’ Mess Business Centre, Royston Road, Duxford, CB22 4QH, United Kingdom 50 Hampshire Street, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, OX5 1GB, United Kingdom Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further information about the Publisher’s permissions policies and our arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions. This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the Publisher (other than as may be noted herein). Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-12-817821-8 (print) ISBN: 978-0-12-817822-5 (online) For information on all Woodhead publications visit our website at https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals

Publisher: Charlotte Cockle Acquisitions Editor: Megan R. Ball Editorial Project Manager: Devlin Person Production Project Manager: Anitha Sivaraj Cover Designer: Christian J. Bilbow Typeset by SPi Global, India

Dedication To Zoe, Vasco, and Elia: Help me to always see the future through a child’s eyes. Children are always looking at the world as if it was for the first time in their lives. So, we should always look to the world with the eyes of a child. I am not saying be naive, I am saying be innocent in the sense of discovering things. – Paulo Coelho

Contributors Emily Ballantyne-Brodie Magical Farm, Hobart, TAS, Australia

Ricardo Bonacho Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies, Estoril; CIAUD—Research Centre for Architecture, Urbanism and Design, Lisbon School of Architecture, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

Jess Canose Food Studies, Falk School of Sustainability & Environment, Chatham University, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Paola Carrabba Studies, Analysis and Evaluations Unit, ENEA, Rome, Italy

Alessio Cavicchi University of Macerata, Macerata, Italy

Angela Colucci REsilienceLAB; Co.O.Pe.Ra.Te. srl, Pavia, Italy

Massimo Curatella Support for Decision-Making—Facilitator, Rome, Italy

Jonathan Deutsch Department of Food and Hospitality Management, College of Nursing and Health Professions, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Ernesto di Renzo Department of History, “Tor Vergata” University, Rome, Italy

Dentoni Domenico Montpellier Business School, Montpellier Research in Management, Montpellier, France

Franco Fassio University of Gastronomic Sciences, Pollenzo, Italy

Allievi Francesca JAMK University of Applied Sciences, Jyv€askyl€a, Finland; Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition, Parma, Italy

Recanati Francesca Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition, Parma, Italy

Benjamin Fulton Department of Food and Hospitality Management, College of Nursing and Health Professions, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Lucio Fumagalli National Institute of Rural Sociology (INSOR), Rome, Italy

Judith Glover Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Industrial Design Program, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Massimo Iannetta Biotechnologies and Agro-Industry Division, ENEA, Rome, Italy

Colin Johnson San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, United States

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Contributors

Pilar Ladislav Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

Gurpinder Singh Lalli University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, United Kingdom

Adrian Lebendiker University of General Sarmiento, Los Polvorines, Argentina

Patrizia Marti Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences, University of Siena, Siena, Italy

Chalupova´ Martina Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

Sonia Massari Roma Tre University; ISIA Rome Design, Rome, Italy

Kelly McFarland Master of Science in Applied Anthropology, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, United States

Fabio Pistella National Research Council (CNR); Passinsieme, Rome, Italy

Annamaria Recupero Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences, University of Siena, Siena, Italy

Pedro Reissig University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Alexandra Romey Department of Food and Hospitality Management, College of Nursing and Health Professions, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Luigi Rossi President Emeritus Italian Association of Graduates in Agriculture and Forestry (FIDAF), Rome, Italy

Fabrizio Rufo Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

Cristina Santini University San Raffaele, Rome, Italy

Paola Sarcina Music and Theatre International (M.Th.I.); Cerealia Festival, Rome, Italy

Hendrik N.J. Schifferstein Department of Human-Centered Design, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

Lucio Sepede Passinsieme, Rome, Italy

Lorenza Maria Sganzetta REsilienceLAB, Pavia; Polytechnic University of Milan (Politecnico di Milano), Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Milan, Italy

Nancy Snow OCAD University, Toronto, ON, Canada

Contributors

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Andrea Sonnino Italian Association of Graduates in Agriculture and Forestry (FIDAF), Rome, Italy

Rojı´k Stanislav Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

Marco Valentec Support for Decision-Making—Facilitator, Malmo, Sweden

Marialba Ventricelli Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

Mandee Wieand Department of Food and Hospitality Management, College of Nursing and Health Professions, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, United States

PROLOGUE 1

food | FUTURE | design Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter Honey & bunny

Design follows sustainability? Over the past few decades, food design has established itself as a separate area within the field of design. This subfield, though still quite small, exists on the perimeters of the international design discourse but continues to grow. Its protagonists enjoy a lot of media attention, with the spotlight on large conference stages and increasing academic acceptance. More and more renowned universities are establishing food design studies and courses. Exhibitions, conferences, publications, and international networks emerge. In short, food design has transformed itself from a belittled curiosity into an aspiring design discipline. It is probably the oldest design discipline in existence and has now become a serious design field. Food design is booming. There is no longer a question of whether or not food design exists. Food designers no longer need to justify their existence, nor will they need to wish for absolution of responsibility from design theorists. On the contrary, through our past work, we food designers have made it clear to the design world that the design of food, along with architecture and fashion, belongs to the basic design genres. Just like the design of living space or clothing, the design of food and drinks also concerns itself with the cultural implementation of primary survival necessities.

Food design is industrial design Food is designed. With the exception of berries picked in the jungle or mushrooms collected in the forest, food is processed and treated by humans; from cultivation to portioning. Designers are excluded from the majority of these design processes, which are, depending on culture and region, considerably industrial. In the mid-19th century, when the world’s first conveyor belt began to turn in Chicago, United States, there were no automobiles, tools, or other technical consumer goods on it. Instead, it carried cattle halves. The conveyor belt was developed for meat processing in the Chicago xix

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slaughterhouses, which ensured as well as pushed ahead the supply of meat to the growing city. Today we mainly eat “processed food,” meaning that almost every calorie we consume has passed through one or more industrial facilities. In contrast to furniture, lamps, textiles, or shoes, most of which are still handcrafted, albeit more commonly in the Far East, food, as it is found in supermarkets, is mass produced and mass consumed. In the western industrial nations, we eat industrial design. Industrial food design is part of the Western, civilized life model. The belief in continued economic growth inevitably results in a continual increase in sales and thus in production. The constant availability of all products that the globalized "market" provides consumers with includes all edible products for the wealthier part of humanity. This cycle of mass production and mass consumption becomes visible in, for example, a supermarket: a grocery store that provides the same, though seemingly huge, variety of food for those who can afford it every day of the year, every hour, and everywhere. This oversupply of food is not tied to local or seasonal agricultural conditions on site. The globalized food market allows grapes, tomatoes, meat, and so on to be ready for sale any day of the year in as consistent a quantity and quality as possible. Grapes or tomatoes are always in season somewhere in the world, and if they are not in season in Central Europe, they are in Argentina or South Africa. As far as the quality is concerned, the origin of the food is as irrelevant as cultivation or working conditions, pollution or soil erosion. The supermarket is the exhibition and retail space of an industrialized and globalized food supply system and a key driving force behind this system is food design.

Do we want to be industrial FOODdesigners? Unlike most other (design) objects, food is an indispensable item. If, in times of overconsumption and hyperconsumption, the design legitimately questions what things people really need, food turns out to be one of the few items we actually need to survive. However, in Western countries, we are currently physically and psychologically further away from the sources of our calories (earth, water, and agriculture) than ever. Food is a consumer good that is available in abundance and it is treated as such. Up to 30% of food in Europe is thrown away somewhere between production and consumption.

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The question of daily nutrition is not only related to diets, recipes, or gourmet criticism, but also to effects on the ecosystem, as well as to social and economic processes. What and how we eat is directly linked to CO2 emissions, water and land use, energy, and transport systems. Agriculture as the production site of our food causes around 30% of global CO2 emissions and uses about 70% of the total fresh water supply. Against these figures, it becomes clear why food waste, for instance, is not only a moral but also a very concrete, ecological problem. If we as food designers want to include sustainability in our work as a design parameter, we must fundamentally question the system of steady economic growth, overproduction, and mass consumption. Given the current social, political, economic, and ecological developments, our culture and our food culture in particular require reorientation. Hence, the connection between resource consumption and food production is clearly a result of the increasing world population as well as rising meat consumption. Additionally, economic growth pressure is leading to an increase in production. Design is an experiment, freethinking, and the future. Issues such as climate change, social inequalities, or waste production cannot be excluded from a reflected discourse on food design. While designers contributed significantly to the digital revolution just a few years ago with their concepts and solutions, today they could support a trend toward a more conscious approach to justice, fairness, resources, and pollution; in short, a “sustainable revolution.” As food designers, we sit at the pivot of culture, interaction, and object. Food design is the interface of different disciplines as well as the creative space between idea, production, market, and consumption. This is exactly where we have to deal with the handling of resources as well as unwanted side effects (externalities), labor rights, and the increasing influence of digital spaces. All of this requires joy in experimentation, transdisciplinary and international cooperation, and cooperation with science and research through design. Design is a powerful tool. We should be aware of that. And which field of design would be better suited to experimentally discuss sustainable design than food design? Our answer to the theoretical research and efforts to prove climate change, to explain refugee flows, or to justify ecological and social sustainability is the question of how creative and interventionist means can be used to initiate changes in behavior and mindsets toward food. It is not to the industry, but to the democratic society that we owe our thoughts, findings, and creations.

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Simply sustainable—Too eco-friendly, too moral, too embarrassing? According to an old proverb, food comes before morals. In truth, food is always linked to moral concepts. Every society and every culture chooses its food according to moral rules, designs its edible products according to ritual ideas and systems of order, and consumes it according to previously defined rules. Eating is a cultural act that follows certain values. The everyday intake of calories is not only a matter of enjoyment and taste, but it also connected to a society’s and its members’ ways of life and thinking. As food designers, we can and must radically question and re-shape the cultural values of our time. We must ask ourselves how and why our culture stands in the way of better, more balanced, and sustainable food consumption. Why is it so embarrassing, so exhausting, so difficult to live sustainably? Does our economic system prevent a sustainable lifestyle? Is the belief in steady economic growth compatible with a future worth living in for generations to come? Is 2% more food per year needed for the steadily shrinking population of our continent? Nothing is so intertwined with our everyday lives, our personalities, and our culture as the selection, preparation, and consumption of food. Show me what you eat and I will tell you who you are! We believe in seemingly universal values such as health, hygiene, tradition, ritual, and behavior; perhaps in animal welfare or organic farming, too. We believe in political, religious, and cultural values. We subordinate ourselves to these values when it comes to food, among other things. For example, which parts of animals and plants are classified as “edible” and which as “garbage” is, for the most part, a cultural issue. Do I peel an apple or a potato or do I eat it with the peel? Do I remove fat strips when cooking or do I serve them? These and similar questions are answered by traditions, rules, and conventions that influence each meal. Our everyday food is intimately interwoven with our culture. Sometimes we show our belief in eating-values obtrusively. Sometimes we feel bothered by the values of others, and most of the time we do not even notice that we obey our own values unconditionally. Presumably, even you may feel more committed to table manners than to traffic regulations, right? Do you throw away fat strips or streaked meat? Would you ask a stranger at an inn to let you have the leftovers from his clearly oversized meal to reduce food waste? It’s so damn embarrassing to be so incredibly exhaustingly sustainable!

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The cultural aspect of sustainability is crucial, especially in respect to eating. Since we generally do not act rationally concerning food (for example, we eat much that we know is unhealthy or fattening) and follow other principles (such as feelings, habits, culture, traditions, values, etc.), sustainability in dealing with food must be culturally embedded in order to function as such. Therefore, it is not just about making our food sustainable but also our food culture, and this is where our creative design expertise comes into play. For the rules and rituals around our food are only scarcely predetermined by nature or the economy, but instead can be shaped. Food design, through appropriate arrangement, has the capacity to influence this culture and can be used, for example, to shorten transport distances or avoid food waste. In all its facets, food offers us endless possibilities for action. The only question is which topics within this spectrum we want to deal with in the future.

Food design—A goal in mind Food designers work with humanity’s most important, even most vital, good and thereby carry enormous responsibility. Food designers create at the edges of justice and sustainability, as every design act around our food is just as much related to hunger and overweight as it is to intensive use of resources, soil erosion, and all kinds of water and air pollution. Food designers by definition act politically and, if you like, morally. Food designers should, indeed must, emerge as pioneers in the international design world, because no object designed by humans is as biological, economic, and cultural as food. Food is the only design product that keeps us alive. Without food design comes death, for apart from very few exceptions such as wild berries we humans eat nothing without having previously (re)designed it. (Almost) everything hunted or collected is physically and/or chemically altered before we humans put it in our mouths. Since the beginning of human history, nothing has been as subject to design as food. During the Neolithic Revolution, our ancestors turned grains into seed, landscape into field, and game into livestock. The forefathers and foremothers of today’s designers created wheat, barley, or corn from a few wild grass species and huge dairy and meat suppliers from a few small wild artiodactyls. They redesigned life, intervened in evolution, and subjugated the Earth. Today, little has changed. Although there are hardly any designers in the development departments of large food companies, if we understand the will to create as design, and we have to, the

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inclusion of all questions that concern our dealings with nature (and the people living in it) in the food design discourse is inevitable. We must discuss the goals and design parameters of our growing discipline here and now. Do we want to become decorators of global food production or, out of humanity’s most important design field, form a discipline in the spirit of social and ecological sustainability? Could, and should, the strengthening of open, democratic production and marketing of food not be part of our work? Shouldn’t we question why our culture’s values lead us to divide fruits into ugly and beautiful, prefer meat to vegetables, but still distinguish high-quality from low-quality meat, eat strawberries in winter, and not have leftovers to take home from work in food service industry? Did you know, for example, that at the time of the Sun King Ludwig pure pork fat was considered the most luxurious of all ingredients? As designers, we design life situations; as food designers, the way people treat their food. We question, change, and create new aspects of food culture. Currently, the rules and design parameters of food in western industrialized countries follow the concept of the centralized industrial society. For us, the question is whether, as food designers, we must (and want to) subordinate ourselves to this basic system of industrial production, mass production, and mass consumption by shaping food for the global market. Or whether it is not far more our task as a discipline to think about alternatives to this system? As a discipline, food design has the potential to reflect on and redefine the ideologies that underlie the design and production of food in a larger social context. For in our opinion, the aspiration of “good” design also lies in the equal fulfillment of economic, social, and ecological requirements. The most wonderful thing about food design is the ability to make changes happen, because nothing can touch, excite, or repulse people emotionally as much as food. Food design reaches people emotionally and directly, and that is exactly what can trigger a debate, thoughts, and ideas for a different way of life. For the sight, the smell, the taste of food seduce us as much as the table community. When we eat, we humans are willing to let ourselves go, to act intuitively and spontaneously, and to open ourselves to new things. This distinguishes food design from all other design disciplines. We can create new rules, ideals, and design parameters, in short values, all about food! With that, we as food designers can also seduce toward a better world. We just have to do it.

PROLOGUE 2

Sustainable food design required for Global Food Systems Reform Marc Buckley Climate Activism

How we produce food will have the greatest impact on alleviating human suffering, improving health and nutrition, and mitigating negative environmental impacts. Food design is a very important concept in the agriculture, seafood, food, and beverage industries. Negative food design uses high-carbon methods leading to deforestation, soil contamination, overfishing, bycatch, tons of food waste, and packaging pollution. In addition, the food produced is typically unsustainable, unhealthy, and without nutritional value. Alternatively, positive food design uses nonfinite resources (water, energy, soil) and avoids the use of chemicals and pesticides, unnatural aromas and flavors, fossil fuels, and emission of greenhouse gases. It produces less packaging pollution and food waste than negative food design, and the food produced is healthy, sustainable, and nutritional. Positive food design can protect the environment by instilling circular economy principles, one planet living, biodiversity, agrforestry, agroecology, and regenerative organic practices. As such, sustainable food design should be the norm in reforming global food systems. Food is nonnegotiable; it is humanity’s most vital power source and the biggest indicator and measurement of planetary health and prosperity. Food has calories, which are units of energy you bring into your body. Calories provide the energy you need to maintain body temperature as well as perform activities such as walking, moving, and eating. Every one of your body’s molecules has energy within it and this energy is created from food. In this time of COVID-19, have you thought about where you are going to get your most precious energy source, your food? Are you beginning to realize how fragile our food system is? Did you know that 10 major companies own more than 80% of the world’s food brands? Our food system is not only fragile but it is also lacking diversity; we need resilience. Current logistic and supply chain pathways for food can and do shut down in times of crisis and lockdown. Resilience is beneficial to sustainable food design.

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In January 2018, all the world’s international organizations (United Nations, World Economic Forum, World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, etc.) made a definitive shift from linear, lateral, and siloed approaches to solving our global grand challenges. They shifted to a systems view by embracing complex system tools such as transformational maps, dynamic modeling, systems thinking, backcasting, and exponential road mapping. The linear, siloed view of the world is not working and the exponentially growing grand challenges are not being addressed with enough impact to create a rebalancing within the safe operating space of our planetary boundaries. One analogy I use to help explain systems’ thinking is the human body. Our bodies are made up of 11 complex systems (nervous, digestive, skeletal, etc.) that all work together in complete harmony. There is no one system that controls your whole body or all the other systems, but if one of these systems breaks down, you get sick and the other systems compensate and try to recover. This complex but completely organized way to view and address our global grand challenges is the only way to create resilient, desirable futures for humanity. As an advocate of the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs), I want to bring clarity around how we should view the goals and understand them in order to apply them to our lives and business models for successful results. They are often depicted linearly, but that may disguise the fact that they must be achieved within the safe operating space of a resilient and stable planet. All 17 of the SDGs are tied to the agriculture, seafood, food, and beverage industries. It is helpful to look at the goals in the guise of a new integrated framework or systems view called “the wedding cake,” as devised by Johan Rockstr€ om, Executive Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Director-designate of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and Chairman of the EAT Advisory Board, and Pavan Sukhdev, founder and CEO of Gist Advisory. The base layer of the cake is the Biosphere: life on land; life below water; clean water and sanitation; and climate action. The central layer is Society: no poverty; sustainable cities and communities; peace, justice, and strong institutions; affordable and clean energy; good health and well-being; quality education; gender equality; and zero hunger. The top layer is the Economy: decent work and economic growth; industry, innovation, and infrastructure; reduced inequalities; and responsible consumption and production. At the pinnacle is partnership for the goals. This model shows how all the SDGs are connected either directly or indirectly to sustainable and healthy food. It is a paradigm shift to see our

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planet as nonnegotiable and not as a factor that limits prosperity, transformation, and success. It proves that food is a prerequisite for success. If we can succeed with food, we will succeed for all people as well as the planet. More specifically, “the wedding cake” shows how global food reform can affect the whole planet. The agriculture, food, and beverage industries are the greatest strain on natural resources and the health and wellbeing of everyone on Earth. The majority of the food we grow first goes to feed cars, then animals, and lastly humanity. Our food is creating a pandemic of obesity, diabetes, asthma, heart disease, and other health problems. The fossil fuels and refrigerants we use to produce and transport these products are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases; more so than the oil, coal, and gas industries combined. The packaging for food is causing biodiversity loss in our oceans and contamination on land. Globally, 40% of all food produced is wasted or thrown away before it is consumed. If we dispose of this waste by burying it in landfills, it comes back to bite us as methane, which is 84 times more powerful at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. This means that this food is not only 40% waste but also an exponential multiplier of greenhouse gas emissions. Even if this waste is burned or dumped into the water, the long-term results are not much better. Just one quarter of the 40% of food waste globally is enough to feed everyone in the world who is suffering from hunger and malnutrition. We need to transition the planet into a safe operating space. In the same way that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs depicts the basic bottom layers of humanity’s physiological and safety needs. The bottom Biosphere layer of “the wedding cake” is how we produce all products on Earth, especially agriculture, seafood, food, and beverages, which are basic needs and our most vital sources of energy. The agriculture, seafood, food, and beverage industries contribute $20 trillion USD to the global economy with a shadow economy of $3 trillion USD. Agriculture, at 12,000 years old, is the world’s oldest and most successful economy. The world is what we call an “agrarian society.” All cultures, communities, and cities were formed around and began with farming. Communities were built around our energy sources and food. Did you know that agriculture is the largest employer in the world and the largest employer of women and girls? It is the least digitized industry that hires the least educated at the lowest wages. It also produces the greatest exponential waste of any industry. It is the greatest largest contributor to disease and greenhouse gases. Since the Industrial Revolution, there have been some mentionable innovations in the agriculture, seafood, food, and beverage industries, and none of them

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has really had a positive impact on humanity or the environment. As such, we are living beyond our finite resources and the regenerative capacities of our natural world. If you cheapen food you are only cheapening life! Never before has there been a better time to get on the right side of history and globally reform our food systems to work for everyone on earth. The UN Food Systems Summit 2021 held by the Secretary-General will convene this Summit to launch bold new actions to transform the way the world produces and consumes food, delivering progress on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The platform is open to everyone to have a voice and seat at the table to transform our food systems. Keeping this in mind as a food designer, how can you change the narrative and the way we design food in the future so that we can live within the safe operating space of our planetary boundaries? I hope this book inspires you to be a food designer, but more importantly to be a passionate sustainable food designer. Sonia has inspired thousands of students around the world and tried to influence them with the knowledge and importance of understanding the systems and facets around food design, empowering them with the abilities to use systems thinking and innovations for understanding how to use food design to help people have healthier and more sustainable behaviors. I also hope to have, in the near future, a generation of “sustainable natives,” (Massari, 2016) that is, individuals who are born and grow up in a world that only gives them instruments designed to promote correct food practices and consumption habits. This book explains the different forms, applications, and potential of food design in agriculture, science, politics, economy, and so on, while providing the empirical tools for its application.

References Massari, S. (2016). Sustainable natives, youth manifesto and design approaches. Designing a world for “sustainable natives”. In 2nd International Conference on Food Design (pp. 151–162). NYC, New York: The New School, International Society for Food Design and Food Design North America. ISBN 978-1-4951-9291-3.

PROLOGUE 3

Design is challenging the fields of knowledge Lorenzo Imbesi Sapienza Universita` di Roma, Rome, Italy

The collapse of disciplinary knowledge starts from the awareness that we always move within complex systems, which in turn force us to give up reducing knowledge to unified theories. Electronic data processing has exposed us to an exponential increase in the amount of information we interface with, in which we can navigate with different magnifying glasses each time. Likewise, the infinite possibilities developed by electronic data processing show us intelligent systems that are more complex than the sum of the individual elements of which they are composed, in turn capable of learning and evolving in exceptional ways. Systems are not only different in quantity but also in quality because they involve cultural, social, technological, infrastructural, scientific, economic, and environmental systems, all of which are strongly intertwined and thus interdependent. Heinz von Foerster, considered the founder of “second cybernetics,” in his epistemological wandering expressed his antidiscipline while touching biology, philosophy of language, and systems theory together, starting from physics: “I have no idea which is my specialty. My specialty, perhaps, is just not having a discipline” (Von Foerster & Porksen, 2001). Not surprisingly, one of his best known books was provocatively titled Truth is the Invention of a Liar (2001). von Foerster’s work stands out from the first cybernetic wave of Wiener and McCulloch (McCulloch, 1965; Wiener, 1948) because it radically changes the object of observation, from observed systems to observing systems, that is, to living systems capable of looking at themselves, of observing their own observations, crossing concepts and paradigms of biology, mathematics, and physics, such as the concept of self-poiesis of Maturana and Varela (1985) to distinguish the living from the nonliving, or that of self-organization, typical of complex systems that cannot be reduced to their basic elements. His research work colonizes other territories, borrows from other disciplines, uses epistemological “theft” to deconstruct and open up to new scenarios of knowledge, using and transforming the same methods. Trans-Discipline does not just connect disciplines, but also transforms them

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into something different from the starting state, undermining their certainties and building innovation. Complexity is therefore not considered a denial of cognitive action, but rather as a greater opportunity for action, indeed as a multiplication of opportunities for action, while moving the object of observation and walking on the borders. If on the one hand we see the collapse of historical categories, operational scales, as well as the disciplinary knowledge that appears increasingly mobile and fast, design develops a hybrid way of investigating reality and looking outside of itself. While studying the birth of the discipline, Michel Foucault observed how the encyclopedic knowledge inherited from the Enlightenment resulted in the development of specialized practices through the classification and objectification of categories, in order to allow the dissection of knowledge: “the disciplines characterize, classify, specialize, place along a scale, divide in a normative way, hierarchize and, in the last analysis, disqualify and invalidate” (Foucault, 1975). As a result, the disciplines we inherit from modern society take on the task of stabilizing complex forms in clear and neat geometries, normalizing multiplicities, classifying diversities, containing change. The disciplinary space in this regard risks becoming a space for cataloging and measuring the differences of a knowledge that is instead mobile and fast. With the awareness that human action takes place within complex systems and that indeed women and men are complex systems themselves, the apparatuses of knowledge and disciplinary structures find themselves facing new problems that force them to leave consolidated awareness and monolithic theories. The result is a methodological “antidiscipline” that crosses disciplinary concepts and paradigms, to translate a constantly changing reality and in which differences can take on a value for the evolution of knowledge itself. As a consequence, design appears “undisciplined” because it looks outside itself and develops a hybrid way of investigating reality. This is due to its nature of being incessantly “in-between,” in the middle, between, and on the borders of knowledge and techniques that design takes away from other disciplines, to bring them into the applications of everyday life, translating them into real and virtual artifacts, scenarios, and communication. If innovation has to face the unknown, often by hybridizing different factors and often developing connections that seem unlikely, design challenges

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disciplines by opening up structures and blurring recognized boundaries of knowledge, often overcoming conventions. Design develops a structurally open territory of knowledge, which is at the same time flexible and has no fixed rules, nor a too rigid definition of its various declinations. While practicing the contamination of skills, design shows a great creative capacity to perceive unusual and different connections and ideas. As in the methodology of scientific programs, the way in which design operates is eminently interdisciplinary, outside of rigorous sectoral logic, playing with the creative “lateral thinking” from which innovation is born (De Bono, 1992). Design walks on the boundaries and at the same time incorporates them: the character of flexibility that follows is not a form of weakness, nor a defect of identity, rather a form of strength that allows it to face the challenges launched by the new condition of contemporary life, developing every time new tools. The multiplication of contemporary products, which include complex material and social features, implies a challenge to the “scalar” knowledge developed in history through the different operational scales; to each one a field, from the smallest to the largest. The project takes the strategic role of managing complexity, focusing on the innovation of processes and instrumental equipment, to knowledge, which, as is the case of design thinking, are adopted in remote fields and sectors. The collapse of the operational scales of design does not repropose the ancient binomial of synthesis from the spoon to the city, rather a new awareness of the great complexity brought by contemporary artifacts helps us to recognize the profound transformation of the nature of the project and of the related professional figures to respond to new questions for change. The decline of the “scalar” professions developed around the design disciplines that we inherited was the result of the process of “dissecting” the reality into operational scales; from everyday products to furnishings of spaces, to the interiors where to live in, to visual communication, to architecture, to the organization of cities. Each scale represents an incremental cognitive model with its own “vertical” instrumental apparatus. With the end of “grand narratives,” we rediscover a world that suddenly appears more complex to us and in which we are learning to redefine the real meaning of “knowledge.” Consequently, we experience the collapse of historical categories and operational scales as well as disciplinary fields. When we speak about food design, we are developing a wide transdisciplinary field that includes any scale of operation for the design project, from the micro of the action of eating, through the tools and the spaces, to the macro of the big

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industry of production, distribution, and dismission, from the communication, marketing and the packaging, to the industrial processes and even before to agriculture and farming. Design is key in interpreting the needs of producers and end-users, passing through every intermediate stakeholder, in the perception of the social and the ecological environment that will have to welcome at the same time the final product and its final waste. In conclusion, I would like to follow an analysis by Giovanni Anceschi that explains how contemporary products ask us complex questions, no longer reducible to the dimensional scales of the past: how can we consider the design of a Nike shoe? Is it an industrial product or a project of communication or fashion? Also, can we consider a website to be large or small scale? Is it the result of interface design or service design? Or again, should packaging design be considered as a product or as communication? Is interaction design connected to the products, or to communication, or can it even be extended to architecture and urban studies? And what about info-design or user experience? The design project assumes the strategic role of handling complexity, focusing on the refinement of processes and instrumental gears: design thinking, systems thinking, creativity and prototyping, group work, codesign, problem-solving become the toolbox that holds together disciplines and systems of knowledge that have been separated in time in a hybrid way.

References De Bono, E. (1992). Serious creativity. Using the power of lateral thinking to create new ideas. Des Moines: The McQuaig Group Inc. Foucault, M. (1975). Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard. Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. (1985). Autopoiesi e cognizione: la realizzazione del vivente. Venezia: Marsilio. McCulloch, W. (1965). Embodiments of mind. The MIT Press. Von Foerster, H., & Porksen, B. (2001). La verita` `e l’invenzione di un bugiardo. Colloqui per scettici. Roma: Meltemi. Wiener, N. (1948). Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press.

Acknowledgments If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society. – Jean Piaget

This book would not have been possible without the support and encouragement I received from my family. I thank my life partner, Tommaso, for encouraging me more each day. Even when the pandemic forced us to stop and face our biggest fears, we continued to support each other. Zoe and Vasco, you are my life. I would like to apologize to you, even if you are still too young to understand, because in order to edit this book I had to take some of our playing time away, but I hope one day that you can be proud of your mom and her work. Thanks to Alessio and Cristina. You were the first to believe in this editorial project and in me. I feel honored to know you. You are good at connecting the invisible dots and are super smart to build interesting ideas around it. You are great professionals and great inspiring examples for a better future in academia. Thanks also to my other “families” (the DePaoli, the Burrascano, and the Casalini and Allievi crews) with whom I have shared many life experiences over the last years. Thanks to Susan, Francesco, Elia, and Milo for the creative support and help. Without them, working in lockdown would not have been so much fun. The idea of this book would never have been born if I had not been inspired by my students, with whom I have experienced transdisciplinarity every day in my teaching activities. Credit goes also to the multidisciplinary group of professors with whom I have collaborated (especially as the director of Gustolab International) and who have believed in me for the construction of their courses and study programs on food. They have strengthened my vocation to use design methods for food innovation. For this reason, I thank all the schools and universities where I have taught and designed courses, because they allowed me to do the best job in the world: teaching sustainability through food. Thank you to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Hobart Williams Smith Colleges, Chatham University, New York University, New Mexico State University, Bowling Green State University, Edgewood College, Vantan Design Institute, New Haven University, UMass Amherst, Redlands University, Oswego SUNY, xxxiii

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Auburn University, Cornell University, National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism, Orange County and Cypress College, Roma Tre University, Milan Polytechnic School of Design SPD, ISIA Design School Rome and Pordenone, Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Rome Business School, Intrecci, SDG Academy, Universita` degli studi di Siena, and Universita` degli Studi di Macerata. My acknowledgements go also to all the organizations and networks I have collaborated with in recent years because they have been able to enhance my unconventional and transdisciplinary academic career, considering it an added value and not a defect. Hoping not to forget anyone, in purely random order, I would like to thank the Association for the Study of Food and Society community, the International Journal of Food Design Board, the Santa Chiara Lab, the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) Foundation, the Skylab Food Lab, the JRC Science Hubs, the Future Food Institute, Elisava School of Design and Engineering, Red Latino Americana de food design, Global Impact Network, Thought For Food Foundation, Food Design North America, the Dutch Institute of Food&Design, FDxEducation, the Food Studies Research Network, the School of Design East China Normal University, UFWH, Rise Against Hunger Italia, Osaka Shoin University—Aiko Tanaka Culinary School, Aspen Institute, WomenxExpo, Women&Tech Donne e tecnologie, Linaria and Mediterranea, ADI, Elle Decor Italia, and Gamberorosso Magazine. Special thanks to all professors, designers, researchers, and innovators who work and study with me in the field of food studies and food design. Forgive me if I don’t post a list of names here. I would love to put everyone’s names, but you are so many and I would risk forgetting someone! This is what I would like to avoid because you have all been precious to me. The interactions, discussions, calls, conferences, and travels with you have been fundamental for my personal and professional growth. Every day I am thankful to have a community of scholars and designers like you around me. I am even more fortunate because many of you are also my friends as well as great inspirers. I want to thank all the authors. I hope I have been a respectful and punctual editor. Thank you for not having abandoned this project, even when the whole world around us was falling apart. Thank you for what you do in your daily job and for your hard work in spreading design approaches in the various disciplinary sectors.

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I would like to recognize the people who made this project possible, who, with a lot of patience answered my many questions and requests: thanks to Megan Ball, Devlin Person, and Anitha Sivaraj from Elsevier. One note: this book was ideated and proposed before the pandemic. It was edited during the various lockdowns and its “international” soul includes the times and difficulties that each of us, authors, editors and publishers, has had to face in our own country. This book was a dialog and sharing tool between continents. In 2020, feeling united was very important, so thank you all. Special thanks go to Veronika Schmid and Antonio Rizzo for having been, in two different moments of my life, important mentors in the chaos of choices. I conclude with a sentence, which has helped me in these last months: “It is never too late.” A wish for all of us: it is never too late… to do something great. Sonia Massari

Notes for the reader I decided to include three Prologues because I wanted distinctive voices from different fields to introduce the theme of design in the food and sustainability sectors. I wanted the concept of transdisciplinarity “to be tangible” from the beginning of this book. Therefore, I thank food designers Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter (aka HoneyandBunny), activist Marc Buckley, and Professor Lorenzo Imbesi for accepting my request. This book demonstrates that food design is not only about the shape of pasta or about the packaging of a product, but it is also a process, a method of research, and a tool for innovation. The design approach in the field of food is transdisciplinary and therefore this book highlights different types of creativities through several successful case studies. The first chapter, written by me, introduces the themes of the book through a collection of different case studies. In this chapter, I explain what it means to teach and use the competence of transdisciplinarity and what role this could play in the current age of change. The last chapter presents my conclusions. It is important to show academics and practitioners how food design is now present in various foodrelated fields of study, as well as how other fields appear to be potentially interested in its use in the future. This book doesn’t use case studies to categorize, but instead uses them to include and explain the different forms and applications of design to food and sustainability. This book was ideated with the goal of explaining successful food design projects and methods and to promote reflection on how food design could be a means to build innovative and sustainable food systems. Design appears to be an interesting research method to apply to food system education, capable of creating innovative interactions between disciplines and new critical and creative mindsets for food studies. Design applied to food system education will be a powerful research methodology because it will enhance creativity and critical transdisciplinary approaches and help to develop individual and collective innovation. I close the final chapter with the words of a climatologist, Frank Raes, a scientist (typically anchored to hard sciences) who confirms once again that if we want to change, it is necessary to all go in the same direction, and that

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creativity is needed to collaborate and build a fair and more sustainable world for us and the planet. I understand that this is not an exhaustive book on food, design, and transdisciplinarity, but through these case studies, I hope to inspire other professors, students, and practitioners to see food systems from a different point of view. Enjoy the reading.

CHAPTER ONE

The challenge of transdisciplinarity: Design methods for agri-food innovation and sustainability Sonia Massaria,b a

Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy ISIA Rome Design, Rome, Italy

b

1.1 Introduction. Training transdisciplinary skilled change-makers We are at the beginning of a Fourth Industrial Revolution. Developments in genetics, artificial intelligence, precision farming, precision nutrition, robotics, nanotechnology, e-commerce, and 3D printing and biotechnology, to name just a few, are all building of and amplifying one another. These developments will lay the foundation for the most comprehensive and all-encompassing revolution that we have ever seen. Smart systems—homes, factories, farms, grids, or cities—will help tackle problems ranging from food supply chain management to climate change. Professions such as low-impact construction materials designers, ecofriendly aquaculture farm managers, quality control technicians for organic product chains, sustainable biotechnology and emerging agricultural technology experts, food and food-waste designers, innovation brokers in agriculture, and food and sustainable tourism managers will, in the nottoo-distant future, be among the most sought-after and necessary roles in an economy based on sustainable development. This development will meet the needs of existing communities without compromising the ability of future generations to survive and flourish. From agriculture to processing, distribution to food services, agri-food industry business models are changing at the speed of light. Finding new ways to make agriculture more sustainable is critically important for the new generation of sustainability entrepreneurs. Food and sustainability start-ups concentrate on quality, cultural values, and innovation. Executives Transdisciplinary Case Studies on Design for Food and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817821-8.00020-5

Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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are informed, sensible, critical, and aware regarding climate trends, social issues, and the use of natural resources. The reputation of the entrepreneur held to be indifferent toward environmental issues is giving way to the idea of the CEO and/or start-up manager who not only chooses to participate in the green economy as a business decision but also integrates sustainability into their philosophy (through models of transdisciplinary collaboration and co-participation approaches). Some of the problems that we can see in comparison with other examples of innovation include education and the creation of new sustainable cultures, the difficulty of creating systemic links between the many subjects operating in the sector, the need to adapt current support structures for the specific needs of the agri-food industry, and the need for a model of sharing that allows both successes and failures to be built upon and thus creates a virtuous circle encompassing the various entities that comprise the system. The urgency of large-scale crises such as climate change and serious issues on food, nutrition, and sustainability (not to mention the effects of the 2020 pandemic) is pushing us toward a transition to truly sustainable models of development. Though this transition will occur over a long period of time, it has already begun in many sectors and its impact can already be ascertained. One of the signs of this transition is the growing interest in and proliferation of skills and professions connected to sustainability. This new mindset reflects the larger social and economic trend toward eco-sustainability and therefore should be examined from a transversal perspective that focuses primarily on the “why” rather than the "how" and “what.” We must now cater to humanity using a transdisciplinary approach. At the same time, humanity must also turn to transdisciplinary processes to make new creative solutions possible and to understand the current situation. Simply analyzing the future with a multidisciplinary approach is not enough; the problem must be resolved, and empathic coordination among diverse disciplines is vital for doing so. On this basis we can understand the need for transdisciplinarity (Marzocca, 2014). We need an army of transdisciplinary skilled change-makers in order to navigate the complexity and urgency of our agri-food and global environmental crisis.

1.2 Transdisciplinary case studies on food and sustainability design Transdisciplinarity is a relatively new term; it was coined for the first time in France in 1970, during a conference led by Swiss psychologist Jean

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Piaget as part of an international seminar. Piaget gave the following definition to describe the term transdisciplinarity: …in the end, we hope in the future to see a development in interdisciplinary relations towards a level that could be thought of as “transdisciplinary”, that should not be limited to just the interactions or reciprocity of specialized research areas, but that also pinpoints these links inside a complete system that does not contain fixed boundaries between these disciplines. (Marzocca, 2014; translated by Sonia Massari)

Later, Nicolescu developed this definition further by introducing the concept of examining “beyond the disciplines” (Nicolescu, 2006). Coordination between disciplines and any movement beyond their boundaries (which should be considered permeable, expandable and transferable) are fundamental for knowledge to expand beyond any restrictive disciplinary boundaries. Transdisciplinarity is an epistemological approach, but above all it is a cultural space where links between various domains of knowledge are explored to bridge existing gaps in this very knowledge. Now, more than ever, the complexity of reality cannot be described using only one language. Transdisciplinarity helps and supports the overcoming of the complexity of reality, it opens up mindsets and broadens perspectives and research, but most importantly it allows multiple knowledge domains to build new scenarios and creative solutions. As shown in Fig. 1.1, the best way to understand what transdisciplinarity means is to compare it with other terms often used to describe the copresence of different knowledge domains in the same scenario. Usually, when I teach this concept to my students, I use a simple metaphor. In the case of multidisciplinarity, we imagine a doctor, a farmer, and a policymaker locked in a room together, without giving them any kind of indication or instruction as to what they need to do. After a few minutes, we have already created a multidisciplinary environment in that we have brought together people from diverse backgrounds, but this condition is not enough to produce a useful result. In the case of interdisciplinarity, we still imagine these same subjects locked in the room, but this time we ask them to discuss a specific topic together. The difference, in this second scenario, is shown in the introduction of dialogue and of a desirable interaction that we have triggered. Each one of them will bring their own personal ideas to the attention of the others, which will lead to a debate, most likely concluding in a shared opinion (or instead, a disagreement). What is different, finally, about a transdisciplinary scenario? If we asked these same subjects in the room to resolve a problem in a collaborative way, by asking

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Fig. 1.1 Multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary disciplines.

everyone to contribute equally to the analysis and investigation, having the same weight in decision making, and finally by fully satisfying everyone’s priorities and bringing positive impacts on all their sectors, they would probably find it very difficult. In this case, each one of them must use different learning paradigms compared to the ones used in the previous scenarios; they must each share the view from their own “magnifying glasses.” What does this mean? Each one of us, thanks to his/her life experiences, possesses a “magnifying glass” (cognitively speaking) that he/she uses in everyday investigation and decision-making activities. In a transdisciplinary scenario, we have to “play” with, in other words, lend (and in turn borrow), the magnifying glasses of the others in the group. This allows us to understand the problem through the eyes of someone else, without “taking on” their specific role or replacing them at all. No type of hierarchy can exist between the ideas of the farmer, the doctor, or the policymaker. No kind of special leadership should be seen. Once the magnifying glasses are used, we “give them back” to their rightful owner and, using our own competences, we proceed

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to look for a solution. If the three subjects are able to utilize these empathic mechanisms to co-construct knowledge at the same time, it is more likely that their final conclusion will be a collaborative, creative, shared, systemic, and above all innovative win-win solution (precisely because it is transdisciplinary).

1.2.1 From transdisciplinarity to a new framework for the innovation process in the agri-food sector In a transdisciplinary dimension, individual people become a team, since transdisciplinarity is defined not only as the integration of different branches of knowledge on a given subject, but also as reciprocated assimilation of knowledge among the subjects carrying out the task. Just like in an orchestra, each person plays his or her own part of the score taking into account the various suggestions made by his or her colleagues and, as part of the group, seeks to convey consonance and harmony into a symphony (Marzocca, 2014). Alfonso Montuori, a scholar from the California Institute of Integral Studies and a transdisciplinary researcher, proposed (Montuori, 2012) five dimensions that constitute the processes of a transdisciplinary researcher and can be seen as a heuristic method for the transdisciplinary work of scientific researchers. Here I propose an adaptation of Montuori’s theory, introducing a new framework for the innovation process in the agri-food sector. 1. Transdisciplinary research is driven by the research itself rather than by the discipline of reference. To observe an issue without restrictions imposed by a disciplinary lens, we must first and foremost understand how the knowledge was created. If we want to innovate, we must begin to think of agri-food knowledge in a new way. 2. A trans-paradigmatic approach involves firstly an awareness of how a particular issue may be framed in many different ways, and the consequent understanding of the assumptions behind those perspectives. Empathy then becomes an invaluable skill, a vital tool in order to gain a deeper understanding, and more importantly to generate new knowledge, new values, and consequently new innovations in the field of sustainability. 3. Complex thinking does not mean looking for simplification or using a reductive perspective. A “complex” way of thinking integrates and considers all contexts, interconnections, and dependencies of all sectors to be part of research. Some time ago, I studied four teaching scenarios in which the design approach was proposed to different groups:

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undergraduate students studying design, young food businesses entrepreneurs, top-level food scientists, and food studies students. This study showed how transdisciplinary collaboration consistently impacts on the use of creative and critical skills and their transfer to others. This is very challenging to accomplish in work scenarios where participants have similar backgrounds mostly based on hard skills like the food scientists. Transdisciplinary scaffolding for creativity improvement becomes the key issue. The role that each group took on when culturing creativity is what made the difference. Creativity can be an attitude, a way of thinking, or an important component among other skills. Creativity has a high practical value in formal food system education and, for this reason, it should have a more important role in academic curricula. If it is valued more, it might lead to surprising results for informal food system education (Massari, 2017). 4. The study must be creative rather than reproductive. To encourage innovation, we must place full emphasis on the co-constructive characteristics of the collaborations. Transdisciplinarity brings the whole study together as a collaborative and creative process. 5. It is fundamental that researchers be fully integrated also in their role as observers, never isolating themselves from this context. Design, as a method, is characterized by the alternation of diverging and converging phases of research. This alternation is vital to the exploration of a plethora of different solutions as well as to the innovation of agri-food. During this process, observers and stakeholders (also including final consumers) must all be involved to actively contribute to the dialogue of knowledge production.

1.2.2 Why do food and sustainability need design? Food is a complex system and it is the perfect learning environment to unite diverse disciplines (Massari, 2017), but why does food need design? Design is a set of competences and knowledge that we need in order to solve complex issues. In English, design means to plan and project, but not necessarily “a pretty object” or something aesthetically pleasing, as so many people seem to think. Design is always system thinking-centered and transdisciplinary. It unites disciplines and skills, creating an environment that allows them to influence each other. Design uses empathy and cognitive flexibility to help people speak to each other (Massari, Allievi, & Recanati, 2021). We really need design, especially since the United Nations stated that by 2030 we must

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reach 17 objectives or Sustainable Development Goals (SDGsa), and food as a concept affects every one of them. If we do not begin to work together systematically, it will be difficult to reach these goals. There is no doubt that food design has changed over time because societies and their needs have changed. Following industrial expansion, the industry has always been in search of new products and objects; therefore “industrial food design” had the opportunity to grow rapidly and become ever-more established as the research and development sector in food production. Advances in food preservation and other forms of food processing are the result of a centuries-old design that mass society has accelerated ever since the development of the first industrial centers and urbanization in order to create acceptable living conditions, leading to many technological advances being made among the methods used to produce and distribute food. The food economy has created new jobs associated with the cultivation, transport, sale, and cooking of food. Food scenarios have been changing in the fields of agriculture, transport, wholesale distribution, retail marketing or the sale of food for supermarkets, stands, hospitality and restaurants. So, design has certainly played a central part in all these changing and impactful innovation processes. Design started to be applied to the food experience, in all its forms to construct new experiences as well as how to impact existing ones. Thanks to the rise in digital technology, there are countless possibilities for designers, but there is also the risk that they create unnecessary and useless things. Due to globalization, the increasing complexity of the global food system, and the appearance of the negative effects of technological-industrial development, we are increasingly aware of the true distance between production and consumption systems. In recent times, the number of professionals, food products, and objects related to food we come across on a daily basis has multiplied, but at the same time, the current situation highlights a profound shift in the culture of innovation toward a more balanced development. More recently, design had to refocus on humanity, that is, human beings and their values. In food, this is fundamental because these values are paramount in re-connecting and re-creating the relationship between humans and nature. Our relationship with food comes from cultural mediations that a

The Sustainable Development Goals are a call for action by all countries to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. They recognize that ending poverty must go hand in hand with strategies that build economic growth and address a range of social needs including education, health, social protection, and job opportunities while tackling climate change and environmental protection (more info at https:// www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/).

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we create along all the levels of the food chain. The food chain is longer than what we usually describe. It includes production, distribution, commercialization, and consumption, but also postconsumption actions. The postconsumption stage features measures taken against waste, or efforts to improve food education. Working and designing for real people, and identifying their real human values, is the foundation on which we can re-build our future. It is now apparent that food design is an efficient tool for redefining a new balance between food production and consumption, starting now and in the near future (Ferrara and Massari, 2015). In conclusion, design, when applied to the agri-food sector, is a powerful research methodology because it enhances critical transdisciplinarity between people with diverse backgrounds and competences, and helps to develop individual and collective creativities to foster more sustainable innovation processes.

1.3 Design and its transdisciplinary approach The case studies detailed in this book are purposefully chosen narratives of impactful and sustainable innovation solutions from different disciplinary fields. They come from all over the world, and through them we can often see collaboration between experts even from very diverse disciplinary areas. The case studies were collected and selected before the pandemic. During the beginning of the first lockdown, some authors decided to add to their contributions some reflections about COVID19 and the near future. Today, we can all see some of the tangible effects of the Coronavirus on the world’s food ecosystems. Probably today the authors would have something to add to complete their contributions and to define what role design should play in addressing emergencies and supporting new scenarios in agri-food sector. However, the projects contained in this book are not only valuable because of the effectiveness of their design in training and the positive impact this has in real-life situations, but also because they create transversal knowledge and abilities in the management of innovation and in the transformation of different agri-food scenarios. Design is presented has a winning methodology of great use in the process of cultural innovation. It is not only valuable thanks to its technological capacity, which is still visible at advanced levels, but also because it paves the way for innovation brought about by young people, who must be sown like seeds in order to plan our sustainable future.

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Transdisciplinary, nonconventional, and creative ideas are needed. This extra value is increasingly demanding designs for systems that create new and different qualities than the conventional ones. Consequently, new skills and competences are required, along with plenty of imagination to help redefine the relationship between humans and food.

1.3.1 Food systems and design. Envisioning innovative tools for change The term “from farm to fork” (European Union, 2020) details a journey of decisions and choices that are not always simple to make, both for the food producer and the consumer. Categorizing food practices at a global level is extremely difficult, because in most cases, local and cultural distinctions need to be made. Moreover, food habits and behaviors are changing so rapidly that it would be impossible to lock them into a fixed category. There are two opposing trends that we now notice. On one hand, diets tend to become flattened out over a global model that brings together all the different culinary traditions as one, losing their distinctive fundamental characteristics. On the other hand, consuming traditional, local food does not just mean simply eating something authentic and typical of the area, but also focusing on a series of cognitive and cultural enrichment experiences, which can lead to interesting results and long-term impact on the preservation of biodiversity. Everywhere, food continues to play a major role in • enhancing a sense of conviviality; • transferring information and know-how down through generations, bringing together cultures, techniques, and technology from the past in order to maintain and renew them in the present thanks to digital tools; • protecting the variety of local production by creating a culture of taste through ideals and concepts, for example the concepts of authenticity, genuineness, and local culture; and • preserving the environment through avoiding production and distribution systems that have a big impact on the environment, causing deforestation, scarcity of water, the destruction of soil, and increased levels of greenhouse gases. The food systems of the future must guarantee nutritious, high-quality food to everyone universally, and must safeguard the environment at global level. Unfortunately, not all food that is considered safe is healthy. The market must ensure that healthy food always

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have a place on the table, and the agricultural systems with high production levels must limit their exploitation of resources. People have judged this for centuries by assessing how accessible, local, and in-season food is. Today, a combination of excessive quantity and choice in type of food, along with a progressive loss of food identity and a lack of adequate purchasing behavior, make for a disorienting experience for the consumer who is taken back in time to the moment of their decision-making. Consumers have many expectations for their food. For example, convenience, freshness, safety, novelty, specialty, luxury, and so on must all be top level (Klanten et al., 2008). For today’s consumer, experience is conditioned by hyperchoice. Consumers can make very diverse food choices, not only over the course of their lives but also in the same day; a microwave meal for lunch or a salad bought directly from the farmer for dinner. On the one hand, industrial production has sped up considerably in order to take into account the global needs of the population. On the other hand, the chaotic lives of individual consumers have sped up equally, and mobility and consumption dynamics now characterize everyone’s eating habits. So how does production respond to this? In one sense, it increasingly considers what health and the environment needs. In another sense, it takes into account constant research for new products, smells, and shapes that can help improve product success and distinction in the market. The food industry takes all of this into consideration, requiring designers to consider both micro and macro scenarios. The first part of this book is about case studies: design methods for food supply chains, and explores several case studies that describe the potential of design methods to create innovation brokerage in the food supply chain. Anthropologist McFarland uses empathy and creativity, key tools of the design approach, to analyze the case of Profound Foods, a local US food distributor in North Texas. Designer Ballantyne-Brodie and Professor Glover describe the results obtained by re-enforcing conviviality as well as the collaborative design methods in the case of Shepparton Food System in Victoria, Australia. The simultaneous presence of globalization and hedonism when it comes to taste has led to the introduction of concepts such as fast and slow foods, ego and eco system, comfort and luxury, superfoods, and foods without, or with less of, a certain component. In the context of constant transition, designer Fassio talks about the impact of the website Systemic Food Design and how it is possible to teach new generations to recognize “system quality” and “circularity,” placing more emphasis on food sustainability. In their research,

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Argentinian designers and entrepreneurs Reissig and Lebendiker argue instead for a shift in of the framework from food “systems” toward food “ecosystems.” This shift in perspective should, according to them, bring with it a greater impact in generating sustainable improvement in the food industry.

1.3.2 Designing new food experiences through digital technologies Over the past few years, research in the field of design has moved investigation areas toward the planning and experience of food itself, not simply concentrating on its usability (that is, tools and services). The introduction of ubiquitous and pervasive technology has made the interfaces of food equipment ever more invisible, pervasive, and impactful. For example, in the past, the knowledge and values concerning food were handed down over generations through observation and practice (from the recycling of materials to the choice of crops, linking this to the terrain and climatic characteristics, from the techniques of resource management to those of conservation and cooking). New digital and network technologies have now entered every level of the food chain from the production stage to the final consumer. New technologies now have the daunting task of transferring knowledge and practices, and conveying stories and experiences. Transferring knowledge and know-how requires active participation by end users; they become part of increasingly co-productive systems, where the relationship between the raw material and the cultural experience received from the food is very strong. If we look to the past, we can find interesting case studies in scientific research that show that it is possible to create systems in which end-users used new digital technologies to modify their food experience by changing radically their diet. Brown et al.’s groundbreaking project, for example, proposed a new way to diet: a system based on filling out a daily journal and putting photographs of food consumed alongside details of physical activity carried out during the day. This system linked physical activity with the individuals’ diets, aiming to make the user more aware of the relationship between the food they ate and their own activity (Brown, Chetty, Harmon, & Grimes, 2006). Mankoff et al., some years previously, developed a system that analyzed food shopping receipts and gave suggestions to the user as to how to improve by buying healthier food. This tool taught the user the main nutrients

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contained in different types of food, and helped the user consider how healthy a product was when looking at its final price (Mankoff, Hsieh, Hung, Lee, & Nitao, 2002). Chi et al. designed a cooking method that supported users during the preparation of their food. It helped them understand which foods were the healthiest; increasing the satisfaction of the user, activating learning mechanisms in real time, and encouraging individuals to prepare a healthy meal for themselves and their families (Chi, Chen, Chu, & Chen, 2007). Finally, Smith et al. proposed a visual digital system for patients, for example, those suffering from diabetes; by taking a photograph of the food they were eating, they could observe the glucose levels in their own blood. Visualizing food gives a tangible benefit for people with this illness. It allows them to link the act of eating with a physiological state (like the glucose levels in their blood) and suggests future behavioral patterns (Smith, Frost, Albayrak, & Sudhakar, 2007). These projects demonstrate that for more than a decade, designers and scientists from different disciplines have been working hard together to design digital tools that can incorporate abstract concepts such as health values into food experiences. So where does sustainability fit into this? How can we incorporate the value of sustainability into the digital tools and thus enrich the user’s food experience? Grimes and Harper in 2008 coined the term “celebratory” to defineb technologies that are able to encourage positive interactions between humans and food (Grimes & Harper, 2008). The two researchers identified items in the interaction between humans and food, which, according to them, produced positive experiences in users and could be used for ICTs and human–computer interaction (HCI) design and innovation in the agri-food sector. They identified creativity during the food preparation process as including concepts like memory, evoked by sensory experiences; the value of food as an object of exchange and a gift; the connection it brings, that is, the emotional and social bond that food generates between family members; the passion it feeds, that is, this growing fanaticism with which users approach food; and finally, the relaxation people enjoy during kitchen activities (cooking as well as eating). The number of positive aspects linked to the food experience proposed by these researchers is certainly interesting but also limited. It is interesting to b

They highlighted and celebrated food experiences that already existed, strengthening them and making them even more gratifying.

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note that the food experience can be designed, and if designed well, users can find pleasure and success in their interaction with food. This is an important starting point for the design process in the agri-food sector, and to give life to new cultures and more sustainable food communities. In the second part of this book, a series of scenarios in which design methods are applied to create new food and sustainability experiences are explored. Professors Johnson, Cavicchi, and Santini analyze the current global use of robotics in the food industry from an economic point of view, and how this is changing the experience of employers as well as that of customers in the hospitality and tourism sectors. Professor Schifferstein proposes multisensory design approaches to plan more impactful food experiences and therefore to help the food industry to take different directions in the wider market. The professor and interaction designers, Marti and Recupero describe the food experience in great detail as a mediated experience. Their research not only provides a rich review of the scientific literature on the application of digital technologies to the food sector, but also suggests to the reader a series of possible research and study paths for the near future. Professors Chalupova´ and Pilar describe how social media are able to bring certain food experiences to life and internalize certain values to consumers, then they may be able to affect and modify the user exploration and choices and therefore become a more impactful tool for marketing purposes. Opportunities for connection and the increase of performance and communication can provide the foundation for the creation of new and unimaginable food cultures. This is demonstrated in the food studies case on ugly food and waste, presented by researcher Canose. Innovations must be designed in order to support new ways to explore reality, and so to generate new norms, values, habits, and relationships concerning food. The huge number of new scenarios and opportunities for action for the user may seem superficial today, but in the future it could lead to the development in humans of new cognitive faculties and skills and the modification of values and ideas related to agro-food production, which today we consider unchangeable. For the older generations, this would mean learning to adapt and live with these new perspectives and ways of thinking, and improving the preexisting ones. For new generations, food could be a tool for learning and could constitute the first step to true “innovation” and change for a more sustainable world. Everyone must, then, become change-makers.

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1.3.3 Design methods in food-related learning experiences. Introducing the “metabolic food design” We are living in an era marked by great geopolitical and climatic changes, not to mention economic shocks. Innovation is taking place at all levels of the agri-food chain, from production stages to final consumption (but also postconsumptionc), expanding what is an increasingly complex system of relationships, where links and networks are formed both vertically in the supply chain, and horizontally between communities where new knowledge is continuously produced. Population numbers will continue to rise, along with the problems linked to food. The surge in demand, just like the impact on the climate, will increasingly influence economic dynamics between countries, and emerging markets will strongly affect the economic value of food in the economy. From a political economic and social viewpoint, the global food problem will encourage, or even better, force innovation in the areas of food and nutrition and history teaches us that every period of instability and transition leads to great opportunities. Food sustainability must be an essential request of individual consumers, in order to then influence the dynamics of international economic competition. Education on the complexities of food sustainability is now becoming fundamental, because the most vital tools to allow a society to evolve and innovate will be the spread of food cultures and knowledge on how to activate sustainable practices. This societal change is even more valuable because it leads us to view knowledge as a fundamental resource and therefore to understand how to make it even more functional. Kinsey has already hypothesized that this change would quickly lead not only to large quantities of new products and services, but most importantly to improved quality, variety, speed, convenience, and sustainability of them (Kinsey, 2000). A new approach to innovation through food sustainability education, should be the "metabolic" one. Design can be fundamental in an approach like this because it helps users to enter fully into the "new" and to embrace the values contained in the new scenario. Users involved in the design process are still interactive, involved users, but above all, they are active. “Metabolic interaction,” a term introduced by Marc Tuters and Denisa Kera (Tuters & Kera, 2014), is used here in a different way than the two designers proposed. The concept of metabolism here suggests a new approach in the use of design in the agri-food sector, specifically to design c

The term postconsumption encompasses everything concerning waste and food education.

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innovations capable of enhancing the food experiences of human beings because the earth system, like the human body system, could have a “cultural and cognitive metabolism” that it could use to assimilate healthier and more sustainable values regarding food. In other words, we must aim to design in a way that creates and plans tools, services, products, and systems that bring to life healthier and more sustainable food experiences. In order to achieve this, they must be “ingestible and digestible for users” who will make them more and more their own, eventually using them on a regular basis. We must aim to design a world suitable for “sustainable natives” (Massari, 2016), for all those who are born and grow up in a world where cultural artifacts (both physical and cognitive) have been designed to invoke sustainable behaviors for us and for the planet. It must become easy to be sustainable, and this can only be achieved by triggering educational paths and dynamics that cover all levels of learning. The scientific literature on the development of food design pedagogies and food studies education suggest the need to carefully identify the learning objectives to include in food sustainability education to really impact and change the food system. Critical thinking and creative thinking are equally important learning skills in food sustainability education. If both were promoted, it would allow for more diverse professional categories in the food field to innovate and change food culture (Massari, 2017). The third part of the book presents a series of case studies in which design methods are used in food education to the future generations about sustainability. Empathy and transdisciplinarity are the key words for this part of the book, in order to activate innovation mechanisms in the food sector. Nonformal education on food services,constitutes a key element in food sustainability training and its importance is often underestimated (Allievi & Massari, 2021). Prof. Lalli talks about tools and spaces, in particular school dining spaces, as places where education mechanisms are activated. A transdisciplinary group of researchers (Allievi, Massari, Recanati, Dentoni) analyze the potential of design thinking when applied to working groups, and the positive impact and success on youth education in terms of understanding the complexity of food sustainability. Designer Bonacho explores the development of the educational curricula in Portugal to promote food design education in the field of hospitality and tourism. Next comes the case on the food selectivity of seniors, carried out by the study and research group of the designer and professor Deutsch in the United States. Finally, Professor and designer Snow’s experiment in Canada, on graphic design through food, demonstrates how the real world and the academic world can proactively collaborate through design and provide creative solutions to today’s problems.

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1.3.4 Social food design for sustainable development. Designing playful interactions to foster food sustainability According to the findings presented in Part Two of this book, the concept of designing food cultures cannot ignore the fact that human food experiences are an expression of the tools that mediate the relationship between humans and food and therefore our own food-related actions. As such, it is necessary to consider the cultural history that surrounds them, in order to create more sustainable food experiences. In the food project, both the user and the context in which they live, the cultural aspect of food, as well as the diversity of individuals in the community must all be taken into consideration. Food contains a relational meaning that goes beyond nutritional value and the physical need to eat (BCFN, 2011).d Taste and tradition, in their reciprocal relationship, are linked to the theme of memory as a social and cultural experience. Memory then becomes a way to re-connect both the personal and collective past, but most importantly, it becomes a key to the user’s understanding, a mediation tool to manage the present and imagine the future. Design is a powerful tool that can enhance this aspect, impacting the sharing of content and providing new means to access the entry point of a community and make people an integral part of a culture itself. There are several interesting case studies that underline the importance of socialization and transdisciplinary collaboration in implementing change in the agri-food sector. Online health communities, for example, were created as part of the EATWELL project. This research project, carried out in the United States with the aim of promoting healthier eating behaviors within African-American communities, was the first of its kind to use an online platform where users could share their stories and food experiencese (by using audio stories). The first conclusions reached by the EATWELL project confirm that eating habits are culturally situated behaviors and to change them it is necessary to apply empathy, create interactions and build strong transdisciplinary networks (Grimes, Bednar, Bolter, & Grinter, 2008). Building a food culture with a view to achieving a more sustainable future by beginning with the user means activating a repeated and d

For more detail, consult the website BCFN_Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition—Position Paper— The cultural dimension for food (p. 16). e An increase in cases of diabetes and hypertension among African-American communities has prompted special attention from the US government toward people affected. Food with a high caloric content, such as traditional, cultural African-American food, regularly consumed in combination with readymade and cheap food (typical of fast food), can cause an unbalanced and high-fat diet.

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evolutionary process that involves active and conscious interactions between different people, places, and technologies (Choi, Foth, Farr-Wharton, & Lyle, 2011). The I8DAT prototypef (Choi & Blevis, 2010) was designed following this logic. It is a mobile internet application able to produce active, accessible, and interactive knowledge thanks to the way it allows users to play alongside others and share their own food experiences through social and transdisciplinary dialogue. (…) playful interaction allows the user to be aware of sustainability issues germane to the current context, help them find ways to overcome problems, pursue positive actions, and share the experience in ways that are pleasurable to them (Choi, Foth, Hearn, Blevis, & Hirsch, 2009)

Scientific research in design applied to the agri-food sector is now tending to focus on the accessibility and participation of the community, as well as the promotion of reflective and evocative actions, and the collaboration and production of knowledge between different actors in the food chain. However, to date, the methods designed to encourage ethical and sustainable consumption and purchasing have not been hugely effective. On one hand, this could be due to the reference communities, which are still too weak to affect the user’s identity. On the other hand, the large amount of information distributed through the network, which is often contradictory, still needs to be better supported by offline activities (preferably located locally), in order to survive.g Users need tools to be able to navigate all the information, but they also need to interact with strong transdisciplinary communities, to help reflect their own behavior, to aid their choices, and to give legitimacy to new information. In this way, local and/or culturally based forms of creativity and active co-participation (both off and online) should be designed. Even just designing tools that are able to carry new food values and sharing those among the community would make it possible to alter individual behavior patterns. The final part of this book presents three case studies of design methods for co-participation and food community engagement. These three cases are very different from one another, and obviously, they do not constitute an exhaustive presentation of the potential of social food design. However, they were chosen because they represent three different experiences in this field. f

http://i8dat.urbaninformatics.net/. This finding is the result of the analysis and discussion of the latest symposium on Urban Food Futures: ICTs and Opportunities, carried out by the University of Oxford in December 2011, which the author was also a part of.

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The first one details the research of Italian designers Colucci and Sganzetta, who worked on an urban regeneration project concerning food in Brazil. The second case study was carried out by Professor Rufo and the environmental biologist Ventricelli, and demonstrates that it is possible to improve public engagement in science, using an urban project relating to bees. The third and final case study was led by Professor Sonnino and provides a concrete example that transdisciplinary collaboration between experts and civil society is also possible. It is a project that considers multiple voices, one of co-participation and design thinking. All these projects conclude by providing ideas, guidelines, a set of specific objectives, and recommended actions for agri-food systems to take.

1.4 Conclusions: The post-COVID context and trandisciplinarity of design The case studies presented in this book demonstrate how contributions made by different subjects help to transform and share the internal processes of strategic planning and operative execution in food systems. When using the design approach to plan any kind of intervention on global food systems, we cannot ignore what has been done positively and negatively to date. If we want to change things, we need to take into account excessive production and the ever-growing expectations of global consumers. However, we must also consider several areas of damage, including environmental and climatic change, and the financial implications of food, to name but a few. To fight climate change, we must integrate different resources and knowledge to relaunch growth and development. Moving from a linear economy to a circular one essentially means rethinking and schematizing the various systems. The creativity required for thinking and managing new models stems from a combination of diverse skills, cultures, and profiles. The transdisciplinary component will play a vital role in planning future agrifood systems. The coronavirus, without warning, has changed our perceptions of the world. The virus/disease does not differentiate between ethnic groups, economic statuses, gender, or geographical location. Nor does it take into account disciplines. It has united us all in the need to respond to the state of emergency. In this complex and challenging situation, transdisciplinarity has proven itself to be a crucial tool for transforming reality and aligning it with the expectations and different needs of people and the planet.

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In this context, design appears to be, thanks to its advanced and contemporary functions and applications, not only an excellent tool for planning new products and services but also a multifunctional method for defining and modulating new networks, and most importantly, new systems. In the agri-food sector, too, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been considerable progression and development in the world of design, with the redesign of relationship systems, alliance structures, and methods of interaction between different stakeholders. Some positive progress has been made, like the fact that the emergency has pushed many agri-food companies to have a bolder and more open approach to their knowledge, lowering the divides that separated them from the outside world and experimenting with new forms of collaboration with other sectors. Let us consider food delivery or the forms of logistical approach between those who produce (farm) and those who sell and buy (fork). These must managed in a way that does not sacrifice the precious know-how and identity of the individual, but rather one that finds new ways to reinvent these and face difficulties by seeking to interact and network with different companies, including transversally over different sectors. The COVID-19 crisis also seems to have polished up our “civic sense of duty,” and the new connections between business and public interest seem to help reconcile individual and corporate interests with those of the community. These important developments are vital as we explore issues such as the complexity of food sustainability and, more generally speaking, food systems themselves. In addition to this, food design has given a huge boost to new designs for the relationships between companies, and between companies and their local surroundings. Opening up to new possibilities, experimenting with new forms of cooperation, as well as exploring innovative networked organizational mechanisms is no easy task. It involves bringing together very diverse skills under one common project. For this reason, it means sharing values, objectives, and methodologies in a transdisciplinary way. Companies and stakeholders in the agri-food sector, for example, sparked by the COVID-19 crisis, are now regularly taking steps forward in both the awareness of the social repercussions of their businesses and the knowledge that they are components of a wider, complex system, a community united by the same development and sustainability needs. A principle of collective vision appears to have been born, though it is still in its embryonic stages.

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Before this pandemic, we never had such a strong understanding of the need to develop new ways of working, to rethink global value chains, with a view to condensing, utilizing, and harnessing the phenomena related to new technologies, but also to creating new governance tools and restyle international relations to define what the cornerstones of innovation and sustainability will be. Design is a powerful transdisciplinary tool that could help us not only to redesign our food in a creative way, but most importantly to transform a single creative thought into a project of shared, universal, and sustainable culture. The cases presented in this book show how design can help to envision the future, before the future has even arrived. The present world moves very fast and the future is accelerated by a pandemic that we have not yet defeated. If we want to start moving toward this future right now, we need to start experimenting and convincing others that a different future is possible. A more shared, multiactor and human-centered future may not be enough. We must go beyond the human approach; to be able to define sustainability with innovative thinking, considering humans as part of a larger system and planet. The word innovation must therefore become a synonym of transdisciplinary sustainability. During the pandemic, we have understood much more about how our future could be, not by predicting or analyzing, but simply by observing humanity in action. Now, this behavior can be transformed into services and projects that can take us closer to new goals and changes that will be far from easy or linear, but will (possibly) help us to escape the uncertainty that surrounds our lives now. Design is often thought to be solely focused on the future. However, design does not come from nothing; planning never starts on its own, but stems from rethinking and valuing everything that surrounds it, in order to redesign it and propose ideas from an innovative perspective. On one hand, design strives to recognize the tangible remains of the past, and on the other hand, it influences us to push us further and express our creativity to the maximum. Observing human experience over time in an abstract way is paramount to reviewing our past interactions with the world, and planning those of the future accordingly. The projects in this book demonstrate that change is activated by educating people to have more creative visions and by providing them management tools that can overcome the burdens of the past, in order to educate end-users to use design to promote their systemic ideas. We are designing a new era, one that goes beyond human-centered design and breaks into

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earth-humanity-centered design, where a transdisciplinary approach will be even more indispensable.

References Allievi, F., & Massari, S. (2021). Promoting sustainable food availability and behaviour on campus: Current perceptions and potential food guidance. In Critical food guidance McGill University Press (in press). BCFN. (2011). Position paper—The cultural dimension for food (p. 16). Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition. Available online at: https://www.barillacfn.com/en/publications/thecultural-dimension-of-food/. Brown, B., Chetty, M., Harmon, E., & Grimes, A. (2006). Reflecting on health: A system for students to monitor diet and exercise. In CHI06 (pp. 1807–1812). Montreal: ACM. Chi, P. Y., Chen, J. H., Chu, H. H., & Chen, B. Y. (2007). Enabling nutrition-aware cooking in a smart kitchen. In Proc. CHI 2007 Extended Abstracts (pp. 2333–2338). ACM Press. Choi, J., & Blevis, E. (2010). HCI & sustainable food culture: A design framework for engagement. In NordiCHI2010. Reyakjavik. Choi, J., Foth, M., Farr-Wharton, G., & Lyle, P. (2011). Designing for engagement towards healthier lifestyle through food image sharing: The case of I8DAT. In INTERAC2011. Lisbon. Choi, J., Foth, M., Hearn, G., Blevis, E., & Hirsch, T. (2009). Hungry 24/7? HCI design for sustainable food culture (workshop). In OZCHI2009. Farm to fork strategy. (2020). European Union. Available online at: https://ec.europa.eu/ food/farm2fork_en. Ferrara, M., & Massari, S. (2015). Evoluzione del concept food design: Intersezioni storiche tra cibo, design e cultura alimentare occidentale. AIS/Design Storia e Ricerche n. 5, 22817603. Available online at: http://www.aisdesign.org/aisd/evoluzione-del-conceptfood-design. Grimes, A., Bednar, M., Bolter, J. D., & Grinter, R. E. (2008). EatWell: Sharing nutritionrelated memories in a low-income community. In Proceedings of the 2008 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, November 8-12, 2008 (pp. 87–96). San Diego, CA, USA: CSCW 2008. Grimes, A., & Harper, R. (2008). Celebratory technology: New directions for food research in HCI. In CHI2008 (pp. 467–476). Florence: ACM. Kinsey, J. A. (2000). Information technology in the retail food industry. Technology in Society, 22, 83–96. Klanten, R., Ehmann, S., Moreno, S., Schulze, F., Wagner, O., Raymond, M., et al. (2008). CrEATe. Berlino: Gestalten. Mankoff, J., Hsieh, G., Hung, H. C., Lee, S., & Nitao, E. (2002). Using low-cost sensing to support nutritional awareness. In Proc. Ubicomp 2002 (pp. 371–378). Marzocca, F. (2014). Il nuovo approccio scientifico verso la Transdisciplinarita`. Rivista di Psicoantropologia Simbolica, 4–20. Mythos Edizioni. Massari, S. (2016). Sustainable natives, youth manifesto and design approaches. Designing a world for “sustainable natives”. In 2nd international conference on food design (pp. 151–162). NYC, New York: The New School, International Society for Food Design and Food Design North America, ISBN:978-1-4951-9291-3. Massari, S. (2017). Food design and food studies: Discussing creative and critical thinking in food system education and research. International Journal of Food Design, 2(1), 117–133. https://doi.org/10.1386/ijfd.2.1.117_1. Massari, S., Allievi, F., & Recanati, F. (2021). Fostering empathy towards effective sustainability teaching: From the Food Sustainability Index educational toolkit to a new

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pedagogical model. In Teaching and sustainable development: Using the transformative power of teaching to raise awareness on sustainable development and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals Edward Elgar Publishing Inc. (in press). Montuori, A. (2012). Five dimensions of applied transdisciplinarity. Available online at: http:// integralleadershipreview.com/7518-transdisciplinary-reflections-2/Integral Leadership Review. August 2012. Nicolescu, B. (2006). Transdisciplinarity: Past, present and future. In B. Haverkort, & C. Reijntjes (Eds.), Moving worldviews—Reshaping sciences, policies and practices for endogenous sustainable development (pp. 142–166). Leusden: COMPAS Editions. Smith, B. K., Frost, J., Albayrak, M., & Sudhakar, R. (2007). Integrating glucometers and digital photography as experience capture tools to enhance patient understanding and communication of diabetes self-management practices. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 11(4), 1617–4909. Tuters, M., & Kera, D. (2014). Hungry for data: Metabolic interaction from farm to fork to phenotype. In Eat, cook, grow: Mixing human computer interactions with human-food interactions (p. 243). The MIT Press.

CHAPTER TWO

The creation of a local food distributor evaluated through a Design Thinking lens Kelly McFarland Master of Science in Applied Anthropology, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, United States

2.1 Introduction Design Thinking is an approach to problem solving that utilizes creativity and a human-centered approach. As Bloch (2011) pointed out, this strategy for solving problems has been explored in product design for more than 10 years (Bloch, 2011, p. 378). Today, it is being applied to more ambiguous and abstract fields, such as services and social systems. Liedtka (2015) adds that today’s work in design theory approaches problems that have uncertain and nonlinear solutions with a process of rapid learning and flexible responses (Liedtka, 2015, p. 926). IDEO is a global design company. A look at IDEO’s collaborative design website (“IDEO,” 2020) shows the ways that Design Thinking can be applied to different areas of industry. Although Design Thinking has been applied to the development of food systems for large corporations (“A Leading Food Company’s Human-Centered Transformation Spurs Rapid Growth”, 2019) to aid in gastrodiplomacy (“Beyond Naan: Creating a Fresh and Modern Take on the Indian Culinary Experience”, 2018), and even in the reduction of waste (“Designing Waste Out of the Food System”, 2017), its usefulness in the development of a local food distributor has yet to be explored. The Design Thinking process was not used in the initial development of this case study. However, the creators of Profound Foods did use certain aspects of the process. Some initial dilemmas found in the design of infrastructure and services may have been avoided through the addition of an experimentation phase to their design process. By evaluating this case study, we achieve a greater understanding of the Design Thinking process and its usefulness in working through ambiguous problems. Transdisciplinary Case Studies on Design for Food and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817821-8.00016-3

Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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2.1.1 Methodology: The process of Design Thinking Before using the process of Design Thinking to evaluate this case study, an explanation of this methodology is necessary. Although different schools of design may use different terms to identify each stage of their process, the same basic steps are apparent throughout the literature. The steps as listed in IDEO’s online toolkits are “discovery, interpretation, ideation, experimentation, and evolution” (IDEO.com, 2013). Although these steps may seem a direct path to a solution, the process of designing solutions is a more iterative process as is demonstrated with the various pathways shown in Fig. 2.1.

Fig. 2.1 The Design Thinking process.

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The practice of Design Thinking is being used today to develop solutions to problems that cannot be answered using linear approaches. This process uses three main elements to combat the uncertainty found throughout these problems. First, designers today use collaboration to develop more sustainable solutions. This approach creates engagement between designers and communities to form a community-driven design, a uniquely created solution for a given set of parameters. Collaboration also leads to the next important consideration of designers, the role of empathy. Empathy is more than understanding the problem; it is understanding the lived consequences and constraints resulting from the problem as well as the perceived options within those constraints. Finally, the third element used in design today is prototyping, or creating a visual representation of the solution that can then be interpreted for its value and pain points and redesigned or else approved for implementation. As Liedtka (2015) notes, prototyping is not a step whose purpose is to reach an end goal of implementation, but an opportunity to have a conversation about the design solution without a great investment of time or money (Liedtka, 2015, p. 927).

2.1.2 Food production in the United States Food production and distribution is the stage of a plant or animal’s material life between the farm where it grew and the market where it is sold. As the food system in the United States has become more industrialized, the consumer has become alienated from the farm, and the distribution company and chain grocer have become the main food source to most consumers. National, industrial food distribution corporations exist in both retail and business-to-business spheres throughout the US food industry, whereas local food distributors are only beginning to redevelop. This chapter focuses on the development of Profound Foods, a food hub created in the North Texas area by farmers who want to focus on the needs of the users at both ends of the food production cycle. Profound Foods is designed to offer a distribution service to both farmers and chefs interested in working in farm-to-table or local food. Although the hub began with a few farmers working together, through being awarded a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Profound Foods has been able to progress toward distributorship at a great rate. The creation of this food distributor is an individual and unique case. Through evaluating its creation using the Design Thinking process, a universal procedure to approach ambiguous problems can be understood.

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2.2 Case study: Profound Foods The crisis found in the United States’ industrial food system is twofold. As many researchers (Albritton, 2010; Montgomery, 2012; Patel & Moore, 2017; Renting, Marsden, & Banks, 2003; Rhodes, 2017) have concluded, today’s industrialized food system is not a sustainable model. Although many consumers in the United States may be aware of these hazards, their reliance on the large chain grocer as their main food source inhibits access to other sources. From the perspective of local food farmers in the United States, the question of finding consumers exists differently. Small farmers are often unsure of how to work with industrial food distributors or how to sell local food through a larger and more reliable consumer market. Local farmers are caught between developing the knowledge base to be able to farm sustainably and pursuing the infrastructure and marketing capabilities to be able to sell their harvest to a larger consumer base. At times of harvest, the lack of a reliable customer can make it so that other successes mean nothing, as the food grown will go to waste without someone to purchase it. When that happens, the additional time, energy, and investment that the farmer put into a crop’s production is felt as an even greater loss. An untapped resource in the local food market has been found in the North Texas area, largely through selling to local chefs and restaurants who are serving farm-to-table cuisine. This market both opens the possibility for farmers to find a broader, more reliable consumer base and gives chefs in cities like Dallas the opportunity to elevate their cuisine to become more revered and respected amongst culinary masters. Ottenbacher and Harrington’s 2007 study on the innovation process used by Michelin-starred chefs found that each of the twelve Michelin-starred chefs who participated in their research considered the seasonality and quality of produce available to them before beginning to generate the meals they would be serving (Ottenbacher & Harrington, 2007, p. 447). Although it makes sense that fine dining would require fresh and seasonal foods to be elevated to haute cuisine, the consumer trend of seeking farm-to-table food has helped transform the relationship between farmers and chefs in the North Texas area. It has created an opportunity and space for farmers to “sell their story” as a part of establishing their farm’s brand.

2.2.1 Research background I encountered the development of Profound Foods through my graduate thesis research, conducted October 2017 through December 2018,

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and through participating in the local food and farming community in North Texas during that time and thereafter. Profound Foods is a “food hub” providing locally raised, farm-fresh foods to a network of area chefs. According to the USDA, the term “food hub” is defined as “a centrally located facility with a business management structure facilitating the aggregation, storage, processing, distribution, and/or marketing of locally/regionally produced food products” (Barham, 2017). Through becoming a food hub, Profound Foods has created a distributorship from a network of area farmers, and their goal is to help grow and sustain the local farming community through “leveraging the collective,” as founder Nelson Carter explained. Profound Foods is located in Lucas, TX, a suburb of the Dallas/Fort Worth area of North Texas. This area has seen drastic change in the past two decades. According to Texas Agrilife (the state office that works with farmers), over the past 20 years, the Dallas/Fort Worth area has seen population growth of 2.3 million people, resulting in a loss of workable land at a rate of 9% per year. That loss of land is also reflected in an increase in a total cost per acre of $5283 over this period (“Compare Selections j Texas Land Trends”, 2017). These changes to population and access to land have resulted in new farmers purchasing smaller land tracts, as well as an increased demand for local food. With this increase in demand, new food farmers could be able to experience increasing advantages in the food market arena, but they must first know how to access that demand. Profound Foods is a food distribution service provided locally to both farmers and chefs interested in working in farm-to-table cuisine. Profound Food’s founding members are mostly farmers: Jeff Bednar, owner of Profound Microfarms, Nelson Carter, owner of Cartermere Farms, and Amanda Vanhoozier, owner of Bishop Hill Farm Flowers. The fourth creator, Josh Montgomery, is Profound’s Director of Software Management. Each member brings their own outside experience and expertise to the table, from information on the local food community to understanding logistics and marketing, to the desire to develop a food hub optimal for the users at both ends. These qualities of the core team have led to an organization designed to minimize the pain points inherent to food supply and create meaningful relationships between the farmers and chefs at the ends of production.

2.2.2 The creation of a local food distributor Over the past 3 years, the founding members of Profound Foods have gone from acquaintances to partners to creators of a food hub. This development

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happened through two of the founders making an agreement to deliver to their common and expanded customer base in Dallas. Once they realized the untapped market of chefs in Dallas, the founders expanded to bring more farms within their local farm network into the delivery system. As an added benefit, they offered the opportunity to join them during their deliveries to the farmers in their network in order to directly introduce them to the chefs and restaurants they serve to increase communication throughout the community. The chefs and restaurants in the area found these combined services more beneficial. Only one delivery with a more diverse array of seasonal produce is preferential to individual deliveries, especially during busy times of day. The individual contact with farmers visiting restaurants created interaction and provided means for the future development of working relationships between the farmers and the chefs. The value that chefs and restaurants found in working with the Profound Foods founders and their local farm network led them to tell more chefs in the area about the partnership, which helped to extend the group of farms’ influence further through the local food system. As the network of farmers continued to work together and grow, the founding members continued to network within the local food system by attending conferences. Through attending one such farming conference, Profound Food’s founder Jeff Bednar heard about the Implementation Grant that the team would pursue and later be awarded. This grant was offered through the USDA’s 2018 Local Food Promotion Program. This is one of several grant opportunities offered through the Agricultural Market Service (AMS), a branch of the USDA focused on assisting growth in local and regional food systems. As they wrote the application for the Profound Foods grant, the founders consulted others that they knew in their own farming communities to help them translate their knowledge of the goals and needs found in building a sustainable distributorship into the right words for the application. Once they applied for the grant, Profound Foods began to create a more concrete procedure for meeting and adding farmers to their network. Currently, a farmer’s membership begins with a short application and a $25 application fee. They are then visited and properly vetted before they are accepted into the network and can begin the onboarding process. Farms are not required to sign a contract or commit to participation in the network for a certain period. Profound Foods gains revenue through a 20% increase to the sale price of each farm’s goods. The goal of Profound Foods is to remove as much friction as possible in creating a business-to-business local

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food network, or “to provide so much value that it would be silly to go around us,” as Bednar once remarked. At the chef end of the network, there are zero delivery fees and no contracts that the chefs or restaurants sign to guarantee membership. Although some chefs have standing weekly orders, there is no requirement for them to keep buying a specific ingredient. Through allowing flexibility in purchases, Profound Foods helps to reduce food waste, as restaurants are not forced to purchase ingredients that they will not use. Additionally, by introducing chefs directly to farmers, there is the benefit of coordinated planning for future menus and creating new meals through working with unique and harder to attain fruits, vegetables, and cuts of meat. 2.2.2.1 Software for growth One of Profound Food’s focuses in the design of their business was to create more marketing power using cutting-edge technologies and employing them to automate the business’ growth. A benefit to the software that they now use is the ability to maintain proprietary farm branding throughout the system,. This goal in development helps farms in maintaining their brands and further aids in marketing. With their online ordering system, farmers first develop their own farm page on the Profound Foods website, which advertises their farm’s story. Farmers then input their own products and prices and use whatever quantity and ordering levels best suit them. Inventory works in real time throughout the system; if a chef orders all a farmer’s available produce, the next chef placing an order does not expect to receive produce that is not truly available. In this manner, the system adjusts to the uncertainties of farming, as quantities can also be updated by farmers with real time inventory maintenance. 2.2.2.2 Logistics As the Profound Foods network grows, the founders are focused on the logistics of seasonal local food and the need to create infrastructure that can support small farmers throughout the year. Diners’ appetites change with the seasons, not only with vegetables and with fruit, but diners also go from eating steaks and grilled foods in the summer to roasts and stews in the winter. This seasonal change in cuts of meat creates a storage dilemma for farmers who may have to hold on to select cuts until the next season. When the Profound Foods team originally wrote the grant, they had envisioned a system of freezers in locations across the Dallas/Fort Worth area to better aid farmers in the network with managing their individually

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stocked meats and to serve as drop-off and pick-up locations to help with delivery logistics. Unfortunately, eventual concerns around management and maintenance made this idea unrealistic. These logistical dilemmas led to the solution of creating a single freezer storage location on one of the founder’s farms. In this manner the responsibility of verifying the freezers are properly maintained remains in the hands of Profound Foods. This method also increases maintenance of proprietary storage and accurate cataloging of inventory, as the team is focused on branding each farm, and a large part of that process is making sure each farm’s goods remain unadulterated from another’s. These main considerations in the development of infrastructure largely reflect Profound Food’s focus on individual farm branding. Their understanding and respect of a farm’s need to develop a brand to compete as a local food provider shows firsthand familiarity with the limitations and barriers found throughout local food in North Texas. The design of the food hub, which accounts for and overcomes a few of these limitations, shows the benefit of having empathy for the lived experience.

2.2.3 Plans for the future The funding provided by the Implementation Grant has helped the Profound Foods team easily outline their goals for the future. However, there are other important considerations that they are continually working to address as the business grows. For example, while many farms have farm insurance, which works as a form of home insurance extended to the farm, they find quite a few barriers to attaining affordable health insurance. In fact, all the farmers I have met since beginning my research have health insurance provided through a spouse who works in another field, or some source other than their farming business. The Profound Foods team told me that they are exploring ways to purchase personal health insurance plans that they could offer as a larger company, with the farms as members of the group network. This health insurance proposal is important for two reasons. First, this type of vertical cooperation is uncommon within the farming industry in the United States. In fact, this is the first I have heard of this type of leveraging used as a benefit to acquire outside resources like health insurance. Second, as the founders explained to me, every farmer they know accesses their insurance through some outside pathway, rather than through their farm as a business. Access to health insurance through their farms would give farmers the agency to be able to work solely in their business of choice without

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additional work to create access to healthcare. This type of leveraging through business design may not be considered important to outsiders, but from the perspective of community development and business sustainability, these innovations in benefits and support could serve as industrychanging solutions. The Profound Foods team plans to grow continually through employing several forms of evaluation. Some of the chefs that participate in the Profound Foods network are members of an advisory board that serves the continual evaluation of the Profound Foods services and progress. The Profound Foods team also wants to create a farmer advisory board. In the future, the founders plan to maintain a newsletter with frequent surveys for continual feedback. In this manner, the team hopes to keep themselves aware of potential pain points in the system, and to keep building value in the Profound Foods network.

2.2.4 Profound Foods’ design advantages The advantages found with the Profound Foods model are numerous, multilayered, and mutually supporting. The design of the distributor reflects the collaborative approach of the Profound Foods founders. Through this collaboration, great understanding of problems found throughout the system is created. The advantages in marketing and proprietary branding mutually reinforce advertising advantages across the system. Chefs find greater demand for the meals they serve by telling the farm’s story, which makes the eating experience visceral to discerning diners. Not only do several chefs list the names of the farms their ingredients are supplied from on their menus, but also many of the chefs feature the elevated cuisine that they create on Instagram and other social media platforms with credit to the farm for growing the food. Additionally, chef groups are now organizing functions that spotlight their relationships with local food farmers, and farmers are hosting events on their farms for chefs to have the opportunity to experience the farming of their ingredients firsthand. Other community members and producers who interact with the food hub have also found advantage through this design. As farmers collectively place bulk orders through wholesale distributors, those suppliers not only sell to multiple local food farmers through the Profound Foods network, but the distributors also gain the benefit of testimonials from respected community members, which reinforce the sales of their product. Additionally, Profound

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Foods has created more positions within the local employment market through the hiring of delivery drivers and other employees to provide the necessary infrastructure for the food hub and access to a sustainable market for more local farms in general.

2.3 The creation of Profound Foods through a Design Thinking lens While this case study on Profound Foods explores the elements of its design, the implementation of that design was not formally employed using Design Thinking. Rather, the founders used their own empathy and expertise to evaluate and create the goals and mission of the distributor. Their emphasis on the value of listening to and learning from others represents both the collaboration and the empathy that designers today work to build. Importantly, being insiders to the local food system themselves has helped the Profound Foods founders to understand the question their design is addressing and to have real empathy through their lived experience of the pain points found in local food. The collaboration that has been established by the creators of Profound Foods’ interest in community-building has led to the design of multidimensional solutions, like bringing on more farmers and growing into a distributorship, which benefit both farmers and chefs and aids in collaboration in future events and the overall development of a local food system. The power of collaboration is evidenced through Profound Foods’ use of outside knowledge in grant writing and development of their original distributor model. Their empathy is shown in the flexibility of the Profound Foods relationship with both farmers and chefs as well as their goals for the company. Looking back to the Design Thinking process (see Fig. 2.2) helps to evaluate how this process may have aided in the development of Profound Foods. While it is easy to see the use of discovery, interpretation, and ideation in the business design through their community networking and collaboration, the processes of experimentation and evolution were not as apparent. Experimentation was not implemented, although it may have helped with previous pain points and would be beneficial to use going forward. Evolution of their business design can be found in the way the founders faced the pain points in their original model (such as in freezer placement) and had to develop solutions. Although the Profound Foods founders may have run through scenarios in an informal experimentation phase, they did not state that this design

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Fig. 2.2 Steps from the Design Thinking process.

practice was used while we discussed the creation of their food hub. With experimentation, prototyping and visualizing solutions are purposefully adopted to aid in the rapid generation of ideas for solutions. In this manner, sustainable solutions can be quickly found. The experimentation phase is when a prototype or visualization of the design is created. According to Olsen (2015), the prototyping phase in the Design Thinking process should not be time consuming and costly. Rather, the rapid prototyping that Design Thinking delivers is a way to stimulate creativity and increase dialogue (Olsen, 2015, p. 184). Prototypes should be cheap and easy to develop. This type of experimentation results in less designer investment in the idea, making everyone more willing to change and evolve the solution.

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The time it took for the Profound Foods founders to decide to change their infrastructure goals in procuring a refrigeration system may have been shorter by developing a prototype in the experimentation phase. In this instance, an actual visual representation of what those freezers would look like, where they would be located, and how they would be used would have quickly shown the flaws in the original idea due to the need for ownership and accountability of such a large amount of inventory. The Profound Foods team came to this conclusion on their own; however, the use of Design Thinking and the experimentation phase may have cut down a great deal on the time it took to arrive there.

2.3.1 The implementation of Design Thinking In the future, it may be beneficial for the Profound Foods founders to implement the Design Thinking process to create solutions to the more ambiguous problems that they face. Understanding the question or problem in each situation can be the most important part in coming to a sustainable solution. The Design Thinking process makes this an actionable part of the process in both the discovery and interpretation phases. Through iteration and collaboration, a design solution grows to suit the given parameters of each unique situation. Looking to the goals of the grant and the future of Profound Foods, the team is still considering a few challenges in growth, such as: • delivery logistics; strains on vehicles and area coverage • limited farmer and chef communication; with growth, the network is tested • maintaining ownership of inventory and branding As the Profound Food founders explained, these pain points are good to have because they are indicative of success. It was apparent that they were still in the ideation phase of developing solutions during our interview. By evaluating these current dilemmas through the Design Thinking process, its value can be better understood. To address these problems in a universal manner, the overall process of how to develop a plan for growth is visualized in Fig. 2.3. This question can be applied to each of these individual pain points with different outcomes. An important thing to remember is that the nature of this process should take several iterations to develop creative solutions that are more universally supported by the members. Beginning with delivery logistics, the strain on vehicles and area coverage is multifaceted due to the consideration of economics. While a solution can be found in the hiring of more drivers and weekly analysis of delivery

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Fig. 2.3 Using Design Thinking to visualize growth.

routes, the questions remain: What is the preferable delivery schedule for both farmers and chefs alike? When should the company add more delivery drivers and vehicles? Collaboration between all groups (farmers, chefs, and the Profound Foods team) to interpret those considerations into expectations and consider the many ways growth may be desired helps to begin to address this concern in a flexible and sustainable manner. After understanding the wants of everyone involved, the Profound Foods creators can then work through the second ideation phase of focusing on individual pathways to solutions. These could be solutions like increasing the frequency of deliveries at set growth intervals or differentiating types of deliveries to better accommodate space and weight considerations. Once these ideas are defined, the team can then reopen dialogue with the chefs and farmers to generate collaborative feedback on the design of the solutions and better generate

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support by the collective. In this manner, the model goes through an evolution of solutions until the most preferred solution can be found. Limited farmer and chef communication is another consequence of growth and limited delivery resources. Without space for farmers to ride along on deliveries, this form of communication and networking is no longer an advantage to using a local food distributor. Solving this also takes the collaboration of all parties to generate an empathetic understanding of wants and constraints as well as collaboration during the ideation phase to develop creative solutions. In this instance, a farm or restaurant tour or other such event may become accepted as the path forward or else a time of the year that is easier for everyone’s schedule to accommodate interaction may be preferred. From these ideas, the Profound Foods team can focus in on specific solutions that seem the most accepted to generate more details or planning. After creating prototypes of these solutions, the Profound Foods team can then present these solutions to the chefs and farmers for feedback to evolve to a point where an idea can be implemented. Finally, the need to maintain ownership of inventory and branding is also more difficult with growth, with no distinct pathways to a solution. While this design process could be limited to the collaboration of farmers stocking frozen goods and the Profound Foods team, the inclusion of all farmers and chefs would help in gathering information about the numerous technological innovations available to maintain inventory and branding as well as different approaches to their use. The input of the entire community would help in discovery, interpretation, and in the first phase of ideation. The Profound Foods founders can then use the next ideation phase to integrate solutions in the design of both a refrigeration unit and a system of cataloging inventory that is the most preferential to everyone using it. The Design Thinking process then continues to the phase of the team developing prototypes or visualizations of solutions and bringing those prototypes to the users for added feedback before evolving to a final design. In all these examples, the main changes to the process that the Profound Foods team used are a formal approach to the Design Thinking process, the phase of experimentation, and an evolution of a solution through working between phases in a nonlinear manner. The value of this approach is found in generating a concrete understanding of the question or problem, in quickly generating ideas and running through them, and in iteratively working to develop flexible and sustainable solutions. Most importantly, the Design Thinking process offers a tangible approach to solving ambiguous problems.

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2.4 Conclusion Through the process of Design Thinking, nonlinear problems can be explored to generate solutions that suit individual communities. Many aspects of the design of Profound Foods could be applied when designing the infrastructure, branding, and relationships necessary for other distributors to compete in an expanded local food market. By using the Design Thinking process in collaborating with the members of a local food system, a more sustainable level of local food design can be achieved. Although this case study is an exceptional example of several farmers who met and found opportunity in working together, it also shows the value of designing a system around the wants of the users at both ends. Through collaboration, the creators were able to think outside the industry standards to create added value in services they offer. Profound Foods’ goals as a local food distributor and their empathy in understanding the local food farmer’s experience also weigh heavily on their design. As a local company, interacting and building relationships with their patrons creates a transparency that it must maintain to preserve the integrity of the company. The benefit of the loyalty built through this transparency and maintained integrity helps to create a sustainable local food distributor. It is worth noting the well-balanced nature of the Profound Foods founding team and how this helps in the design of their business model. While I was interviewing the founders about the development of this distributorship, their collaborative approach was apparent in the creativity and flexibility of their interactions. In addition, their focus on all the pain points that they and the chefs that they work with experience shows how important empathy is to delivering sustainable solutions. The spark that this team of founding members has brought to the creation of Profound Foods is a product of their experience and expertise, their own interactions with the industrial food system, and the value that they find in collaboration with the local food community. On a more reflexive note, as a researcher, I found this evaluation of the process of Design Thinking not only helpful for my understanding of how to use design when interacting with the food system, but also for my own ability to aid in the development of the local food community. It is my hope to develop these ideas in Design Thinking further to create workshops and classes focused on the goals of the local food system and a collaborative design of solutions. As an applied anthropologist, my focus is on a community’s

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wants and the reality of its constraints. Through interdisciplinary collaboration and building empathy through community-level experience, the next steps in designing a local food system can be more readily achieved.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Profound Foods team, Jeff Bednar, Amanda Vanhoozier, Nelson Carter, and Josh Montgomery, for all their contributions and help with the development of this research. I would also like to thank Dr. Andrew Nelson for his advice and guidance and Mrs. Madeline Fletcher Fink for her timely feedback and counsel.

References A leading food company’s human-centered transformation spurs rapid growth. (2019). Ideo.com. Retrieved from https://www.ideo.com/case-study/a-leading-food-companys-humancentered-transformation-spurs-rapid-growth. Albritton, R. (2010). Between obesity and hunger: The capitalist food industry. In Food and culture: A reader (3rd ed., pp. 342–352). Routledge Taylor and Francis Group. Barham, J. (2017). Getting to scale with regional food hubs [Blog]. Retrieved from https://www. usda.gov/media/blog/2010/12/14/getting-scale-regional-food-hubs. Beyond naan: Creating a fresh and modern take on the Indian culinary experience. (2018). Ideo.com. Retrieved from https://www.ideo.com/case-study/creating-a-fresh-and-moderntake-on-the-indian-culinary-experience. Bloch, P. (2011). Product design and marketing: Reflections after fifteen years. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 28(3), 378–380. Compare selections j Texas Land Trends. (2017). Texas Land Trends. Retrieved from http:// txlandtrends.org/data/Compare/Areas/i_DFW-Metroplex. Design thinking for educators. (2013). Ideo.com. Retrieved from https://www.ideo.com/post/ design-thinking-for-educators. Designing waste out of the food system. (2017). Ideo.com. Retrieved from https://www.ideo. com/case-study/designing-waste-out-of-the-food-system. IDEO. (2020). Ideo.com. Available at: https://www.ideo.com/. Liedtka, J. (2015). Perspective: Linking design thinking with innovation outcomes through cognitive bias reduction. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 32(6), 925–938. Montgomery, D. (2012). Dirt: The erosion of civiliations. University of California Press. Olsen, N. (2015). Design thinking and food innovation. Trends in Food Science & Technology, 41(2), 182–187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tifs.2014.10.001. Ottenbacher, M., & Harrington, R. (2007). The innovation development process of Michelin-starred chefs. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 19(6), 444–460. Patel, R., & Moore, J. (2017). A history of the world in seven cheap things: A guide to capitalism, nature, and the future of the planet. University of California Press. Renting, H., Marsden, T., & Banks, J. (2003). Understanding alternative food networks: Exploring the role of short food supply chains in rural development. Environment and Planning A, 35, 393–411. Rhodes, C. (2017). The imperative for regenerative agriculture. Science Progress, 100(1), 80–129. https://doi.org/10.3184/003685017X14876775256165.

CHAPTER THREE

Convivial food systems design experimentation in regional communities: Exploration of the Shepparton Food System, Regional Victoria, Australia Emily Ballantyne-Brodiea and Judith Gloverb a

Magical Farm, Hobart, TAS, Australia Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Industrial Design Program, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

b

3.1 The “food hub” innovation Local government in Shepparton supported a co-design process to encourage the local community to arrive at an optimal food supply chain based on their needs and interests through the development of a food hub in the city. A food hub collects fresh produce and arranges for its distribution, linking multiple producers to a broader range of customers than a traditional commodity supply chain (De La Salle, 2011; Matson & Thayer, 2013). Morley, Morgan, and Morgan (2008) describes food hubs as the “missing middle” in local food systems operations. Aims of food hubs include transparency and source-identification, fairer price returns for local and regional producers, sustainability, and improving food justice and food security in their communities (Barham, 2011; Barham et al., 2012; BlayPalmer, Landman, & Knezevic, 2013: 526; LeBlanc, Conner, McRae, & Darby, 2014; Matson & Thayer, 2013). The Shepparton Food Hub proposal was co-designed with community members, local government, educational institutions, and businesses. The aim of this project was to contribute to local food security and sovereignty through a collective community vision to fulfill the following actions: • create new local markets for farmers that supply fresh food to the local community • invigorate the local economy through sales of local food • celebrate local food Transdisciplinary Case Studies on Design for Food and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817821-8.00021-7

Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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• develop local and convivial supply chain and distribution methods • create community resilience and ownership A food supply system has four basic pillars: production, distribution, consumption, and representation. The case study explores ways to develop decentralized and localized solutions for these four pillars. Healthy local food systems are critical for human and ecological health (Dixon, 2011). The process proposed a food hub to distribute local farm food and to celebrate it through positive representation. The Food Hub became a beacon of hope for developing alternative opportunities for investment in the region to attract tourism, provide employment, and support education. However, the Food Hub has not been fully implemented or realized due to lack of follow-through from local council and community members. The case study examines four major aspects of the project: 1. How local government can become more effective in realizing projects; 2. How system and service design can respond to these challenges; 3. Whether there is a need for disruptive or restorative action; and 4. The design discipline, which we analyze through research, practice, and analysis.

3.1.1 Project initiation The partnership for the Shepparton Food Hub developed when the local council issued a tender for development of a community garden next to the SPC Ardmona KidsTown development (http://www.kidstown.org. au/), a children’s adventure playground located in a bush setting outside Shepparton. The council wanted to develop further the initiative to address issues of food insecurity and obesity, food education for children, tourism, and developing the local economy. The design firms Sustainable Everyday and Pollen Studio responded with a proposal to develop a food hub on the site that would include a community garden. The proposed food hub aimed to act both as a place for the distribution of food and a community place for the people of Shepparton. In this, the proposal had a strong focus on place making and creating experiences for children and the community to embrace and enjoy. Future developments at the site were intended for distributing local food, and for tourist and educational experiences such as cooking classes using local produce, festivals, and food-growing workshops. At the time the local council had publically committed to implementing the project, however, this failed to be realized. A diverse range of stakeholders participated in the co-design process that launched the project,

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including farmers, councilors, council workers, representatives of health bodies, state government employees, and food experts. The co-design process resulted in the development of a feasibility study for a long-term food hub. Proposed activities at the site included the development of a community garden and community kitchen to support education around food to encourage growing, distribution, and enjoyment of local food in the city through the input of local community members, schools, farms, and food business. Through a partnership between Sustainable Everyday Studio, Pollen Landscape Architects, City of Greater Shepparton, KidsTown, and community members, there has been successful engagement of diverse stakeholders with a desire to realize the potential of a local food system, generating extensive media attention. This case study demonstrates that projects such as this do not lack significant enthusiasm and energy from a grassroots level, but they also flounder when significant decisions and resources are needed from local bureaucracies. There is a gap between the co-design and visioning stages of such projects and the implementation and realization of these new types of approaches, which essentially comes down to a fear or misunderstanding of new ideas and approaches into communities with traditionally more conservative values. However, climate change is affecting regional communities in Australia and new ways of doing and thinking are essential to these communities’ long-term survival as important regional food and economic hubs. The next section describes in detail how the project evolved and outlines the related challenges, opportunities, and insights at each step. 3.1.1.1 Timeline: Evolution of the Shepparton Food Hub case study Table 3.1 presents the development of the case study, including the timeline, process, design approach, and insights. Process of learning and experimentation

Learnings from the Shepparton Food Hub case include insights into the process (see Table 3.2). This was not a linear process, but an evolutionary, cyclical, and dynamic way of working where risk, determination, and entrepreneurial values were put into action. Table 3.3 sets out general principles and ways for designers and developers to move forward in the establishment of local food systems. This is the process that was used in the project and that could inform future projects. However, as stated, it is essential to include ongoing trials, experimentation, conversations, engagement, and networking to ensure such projects get off the ground.

Table 3.1 Shepparton Food Hub case study evolution. Timeline Process

February 2013

March 2013

Tender for community garden from local council initiated commencement of the project Design consultants saw the opportunity for greater scope and a more actionoriented outcome Food hub concept suggested through an interdisciplinary array of stakeholders including council, community, designers, farmers, and local business Convivial lunch held to bring together stakeholders in the project

April 2013 Co-design workshop conducted

Design approach

Insights

One-on-one discussions with a diverse array of stakeholders. Collection of local “food stories.”

Council was open to an expanded vision and worked openly with designers to codesign a food hub. The community members, local business, and farmer stakeholders were enthusiastic about this concept; they wanted to see an “action” outcome.

A networked local “convivial” lunch breaks down barriers and silos between stakeholders and unites them around the potential project and issue, allowing them to express concerns and advantages from their own perspectives.

Deep engagement with community was required to understand their needs and whether the food hub was viable. The convivial lunch was an important event to bring together major stakeholders around an important issue to their city: local food systems. Co-design enabled a collective vision to be developed. The focus on services also saw this food hub was not so much about the “physical infrastructure,” but rather about the sorts of new decentralized services that could be developed in the city such as farm gate trails, food box distribution, farmers markets, and educational workshops on composting, cooking, and growing food.

Co-design workshop developed major themes that the food hub is based around: education, tourism, and local economy. Prototypes for services and infrastructure developed.

Council fixated on the designers developing a “glossy” document that reviewed an extensive amount of “Council Policy” on healthy living, and environment. There was a lack of flexibility given to further develop the Food Hub concept with small-scale “safe to fail” experiments where prototyping and addition problem-solving could be undertaken. The end of the financial year was approaching and a document had to be produced. It was a long glossy document. Report completed and submitted; no The “process” was complete. The further input from the designers. designers had no further role and the council took the “reins” of the project. Feasibility study approved by all It took 1 year to get the feasibility study to councilors except one. the council meeting. In this time, a lot of the momentum that was built in the community had been lost and all that remained was a glossy document. Focus group conducted in Shepparton to Council was invited to, but did not attend reflect on the design-led approach to the the focus group, however, it did take part project and to explore further how local in a one-on-one interview to share some planning work that had been done, but no food systems can be designed and activated in the Goulburn Valley region. action was in sight. The focus group of community members and local business people were enthusiastic and wanted action. They agreed to start a “Fresh Food Friday” event on the proposed food hub site and the local paper covered the story (Fig. 3.2).

May 2013

Feasibility study for Shepparton Council “Glossy” document (which is a major developed requirement of any council) developed (Fig. 3.1).

June 2013

Feasibility study completed

March 2014

Council meeting to “sign off” on the feasibility study

September Focus group conducted in Shepparton 2015

Continued

Table 3.1 Shepparton Food Hub case study evolution—cont’d Timeline Process Design approach

2016–19

New evolution: Experimentation with agile projects

2019

RMIT partnered with SPCA Factory for design studio and exploration

Insights

Rather than relying on a static report, designers began to experiment with lowbudget agile projects that were community-led and did not involve the government. Designers also engaged with RMIT University to develop strategic visions for Shepparton (Figs. 3.1–3.4). Dynamic partnership between the The design studio was a fruitful university and industry led to many partnership between industry (SPCA Factory) and RMIT (academia). Students learnings and actions within the Shepparton community (Figs. 3.5 and 3.6). engaged, experimented, and designed solutions to revamp the factory and town with a local food vision. Agile projects such as the GV Food Bowl Food Box and partnerships with RMIT University Design Studios to transform the food economy through strategic partnerships

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Table 3.2 Outline of key phases in designing this local food hub. Key phase The role of this stage

1. Community engagement

2. Convivial event

3. Integrate research, insights and narratives 4. Co-design

5. Prototyping 6. Action and implementation 7. Communication and sharing 8. Business model 9. Communication, evaluation, and reflection

The community framework is based on the International Association for Public Participation Spectrum To bring diverse people in business, community, and government together to share ideas and thoughts in an informal context Synthesis and analysis of information from the initial engagement process Co-design workshops with stakeholders and user groups to develop actionable ideas for new projects, strategies, and initiatives Use of design-led innovation facilitation and tools Visualization and articulation of future projects, bringing the collective vision together in one place Action and implementation of the prototype Deployment of ongoing social media, blog, and public workshops to ensure the visions reflect broader concerns than those of key stakeholders Development and evolution of the business model Communication of project outcomes Evaluation of the project’s success through ongoing research

Table 3.3 Ten learnings from the Shepparton Food Hub case for the framing of designled approaches. Principle Description of principle Demonstration of principle

1. Collaboration

Collaboration between different people in organizations, communities, and businesses is essential to solve systemic problems such as food systems.

The co-design workshops and convivial lunches in the Shepparton Food Hub involved a diverse array of people participating across business, government, communities, and academia. This led to outcomes that took into consideration diverse perspectives. Continued

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Table 3.3 Ten learnings from the Shepparton Food Hub case for the framing of designled approaches—cont’d Principle Description of principle Demonstration of principle

2. Sustainability

3. Innovation

4. Conviviality

5. Co-design

6. Diffusion of innovation

Sustainable design and ecological systems framework must be adopted when designing solutions for sustainable food systems. Openness and acceptance of innovation and creativity is essential in the process to design new models for the food system. Bringing people together to enjoy each other’s company over food is an essential “ingredient” for re-designing the food system. Convivial events relax the atmosphere and break down formal ways of operating and siloed ways of thinking and acting. Co-design refers to the practice of making and solving problems in conjunction with end-users who experience the service or product being developed. The co-design process is most often facilitated by a practitioner with experience in the process. It is possible for anyone to facilitate a codesign process though. The diffusion of innovative solutions is essential to the process of re-designing the food system. There are many small-scale solutions that need to be diffused in different places and contexts.

Shepparton Food Hub has a strong emphasis on food waste and permaculture principles.

In each case study, conversations, tools, workshops, and strategies encouraged participants to look creatively at problems and solutions. Convivial events also worked to bring participants together in the Shepparton project.

Workshops for Shepparton meant that the “food leaders”/ end-users could design their preferred strategy and, as such, outcomes were tailored to end-user needs.

Shepparton Food Hub can participate in online platforms such as the Open Food Network.

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Table 3.3 Ten learnings from the Shepparton Food Hub case for the framing of designled approaches—cont’d Principle Description of principle Demonstration of principle

7. Action and Action and doing are key to entrepreneurialism success. Pilot projects test how they may develop. Local food systems can only develop if citizens begin to take back control of the food system. There is power in doing. 8. Reflection Reflection and evaluation of the redesign of local food systems allows practitioners and community leaders to improve their approach for future work. 9. Project funding Project funding and leadership, coupled with a strong governance and leadership structure, is needed to get the action happening on the ground. 10. Ownership Move on design-led facilitators as soon as possible and find ownership within the community.

Distributing food locally, consumers ordering locally. Participating in community events related to the food hub.

Continue to reflect on the process, for instance, in this conference.

Money to kick-start the project is needed in Shepparton to make this project a reality.

If more people in the local community take ownership early on, there is potential for this project to gain momentum.

3.2 Case study analysis 3.2.1 Barriers and enablers of effectiveness Enablers • design-led process, engagement, and visioning enable the whole network of people engaged to see new ways of operating alternatively to their current industrialized food system • design tools to enable people to have more creative discussion as well as innovate new solutions • prototyping and visualizing the collective visioning and services for the food hub enable community members to engage in the project • Seed funding from government

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Fig. 3.1 Shepparton Food Hub feasibility document.

Fig. 3.2 Newspaper article of focus group in September 2015, Shepparton News.

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Fig. 3.3 Food box experimentation and grass roots action. (Photography by Emily Ballantyne-Brodie.)

Barriers • political and economic systems • cessation of government funding after initial co-design and visioning stages • Lack of community ability to completely localize due to the absence of government input after the initial period • continued operation of the food hub in very uncertain in a highly competitive and price-sensitive marketplace • the preferred model for the Shepparton Food Hub was to move to community-ownership, however, no leaders stepped up

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Fig. 3.4 RMIT University Design Studio for Shepparton Food Hub, Shepparton News.

• the role of designers as drivers of and intermediaries in the project affected negotiation of the processes of ownership around the project, risking its scope to become self-sustaining

3.3 Challenges Despite the degree and range of promise in the project, the Shepparton Food Hub initiative has halted at the hands of local government, which lacks the entrepreneurial thinking and resources to move it forward. The Shepparton Food Hub case suggests the need for the extension of the

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Fig. 3.5 RMIT students touring Guilios Farm in Shepparton. (Photography by Emily Ballantyne-Brodie.)

Fig. 3.6 Food box experimentation in Shepparton. (Photography by Emily BallantyneBrodie.)

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role of local government to that of a facilitator of innovation and entrepreneurial projects, highlighting how essential this shift is to the success of community development projects.

3.3.1 Learnings Learning 1: The key learning from the project is the need to identify and apply design approaches that work outside the dominant service provision model. Instead, socially responsive design approaches are necessary, as they work from a more emancipated position of the practical intellectual recognizing design’s inherent compliance with neoliberal capitalism. In this sense, implicit in the project is a critique of the design discipline and to further research and practice in social innovation design. Learning 2: The Shepparton Food Hub case highlights that innovation at a conceptual level in the development of a local food system is not enough to build a functioning system that simultaneously sustains community participation and revives the local economy. Learning 3: There needs to be people “on the ground” driving, implementing, and advocating for ongoing changes. Professional outsiders like designers are part of the problem until they are able to assist and “design” themselves out of a project effectively. Learning 4: The role of designers in consciously designing and creating new projects is key. I have developed a conceptualization called the “Convivial Self,” which is discussed in Ballantyne-Brodie (2020). Learning 5: The convivial food system has been developed through this work and is outlined in further detail in later research. This approach to the food system is a relational and passionate way to engage with food systems on seven different areas of growing, delivery, gastronomy, lifecycle, storytelling, joyfulness, and designing (Ballantyne-Brodie, 2018, 2020). Learning 6: Convivial design is a relational and tactical approach to designing in everyday life. The case study work and experimentation that has occurred in Shepparton has informed the convivial design approach (Ballantyne-Brodie, 2018). This approach is also outlined in BallantyneBrodie (2020)

3.4 Summary and conclusions The researchers conducted a review of the project through a focus group in September 2015. The findings were very informative in highlighting the intense frustration of local community members, farmers, and local

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business people in the face of the inertia of council in “auctioning” this and other projects where they had used external consultants to create reports. The focus group was an opportunity to re-engage the local community. Shepparton is a rural city of 63,000 people with diverse backgrounds who have a strong sense of community as proud members of the Goulburn Valley, the “Food Bowl” of Australia. The “champions” for local food sovereignty in the community want to progress the Fresh Food Friday market to give people access to local food, but this requires financial support. Community leaders and designers need to bring the council on board to make this event viable. In 2017 members of the initial design team teamed up with RMIT University’s Industrial and Landscape Architecture staff to submit a funding proposal to state government to inject significant funds into realizing and implementing the Food Hub Project on the initial site. The design school staff would also run a number of studios in Shepparton to help develop the ideas further; these were to run concurrently with the funding proposal. Local community group GV Food Bowl Revolution, a collective of likeminded agri-activists, stepped up and committed to running the site as a community collective in line with the hugely successful CERES model situated in Brunswick Melbourne. The local council refused to support the grant application or the use of the prosed site, and years of communityled work to bring the Food Hub to life were lost. Without council approval and support, the site could not be activated. Academics driving the project felt that the council representatives mistrusted their ability and considerable experience to deliver and the ability of local food group GV Food Bowl Revolution to manage and maintain the site. Council would neither allocate the funds required to activate the site themselves nor support any other parties willing to try. The site to this day remains de-activated, unused, and underutilized. This was a missed opportunity to harness a ground swell of local enthusiasm to build the Food Hub and community garden, bringing new ideas and a site for food innovation to Shepparton. An opportunity was also missed to develop both a tourism outcome and ongoing links to researchers, academics, and students from universities in Melbourne, bringing a continual stream of young and fresh ideas to Shepparton and the site. The chance to bring new ideas to regional areas in Australia is always fraught with tensions between old ways of doing and new disruptions. Cultural mistrust remains between more progressive and more conservative regions of Australia, yet both depend on each other, particularly with existential challenges facing.

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More research needs to occur around the role of design in solving complex contemporary problems such as food systems. Professional designers have a role to play in continuing the momentum of such projects and should not be tasked only with co-design and visioning, without taking responsibility to follow through with action and implementation. However, community members are also “designers” within their own lives and should be left with long-term skills from professional designers to assist with solving problems in their places.

Acknowledgments Thank you to the “convivial” Hayes Family, in particular Jill and Bernard Hayes for their support of the design experimentation in Shepparton. I would also like to thank the community of Shepparton, which served as a dynamic place for experimentation in convivial food systems design. Emily would also like to thank Dr. Jude Glover from RMIT University who supported the Shepparton Project and brought RMIT into the “fold” in a crucial partnership for the evolution of the project.

References Ballantyne-Brodie, E. (2020, September). Con Viv: Convivial food systems design in everyday life. Retrieved from: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/457876. Ballantyne-Brodie, E. (2018, July). Designing convivial food systems in everyday life. In ServDes2018. Service design proof of concept, Proceedings of the ServDes. 2018 conference, 18–20 June, Milano, Italy, No. 150 (pp. 1032–1048). Link€ oping University Electronic Press. Barham, J. (2011). Regional food hubs: Understanding the scope and scale of food hub operations. Retrieved from: http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile? dDocName¼STELPRDC5090409. Barham, J., Tropp, D., Enterline, K., Farbman, J., Fisk, J., & Kiraly, S. (2012). Regional food hub resource guide. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service. https://doi. org/10.9752/MS046.04-2012. April. Blay-Palmer, A., Landman, K., & Knezevic, I. (2013). Constructing resilient, transformative communities through sustainable “food hubs”. Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability, 18(5), 521–528. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13549839.2013.797156. De La Salle, J. (2011). Local food hubs: A new strategy in the field of food system planning. Plan Canada, 51(3), 33–37. Dixon, J. (2011). Diverse food economies, multivariant capitalism, and the community dynamic shaping contemporary food systems. Community Development Journal, 46(January), 20–35. https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsq046. LeBlanc, J., Conner, D., McRae, G., & Darby, H. (2014). Building resilience in nonprofit food hubs. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 4(3). Retrieved from: http://community-wealth.org/sites/clone.community-wealth.org/ files/downloads/article-leblanc-et-al.pdf.

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Matson, J., & Thayer, J. (2013). The role of food hubs in food supply chains. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 3(4), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.5304/ jafscd.2013.034.004. Morley, A., Morgan, S., & Morgan, K. (2008). Food hubs : The “missing middle” of the local food infrastructure ? Context. Retrieved from: http://www.brass.cf.ac.uk/uploads/Food_ HubKM0908.pdf.

CHAPTER FOUR

A website to understand and promote the circular economy for food: Systemic Food Design.it Franco Fassio University of Gastronomic Sciences, Pollenzo, Italy

4.1 An interactive tool for educational purposes Consumers are now demanding that businesses take proactive measures in protecting the environment, preserving the landscape, providing ethical working conditions for the labor force, ensuring animal welfare, and respecting ethics during the production process. Quality is thus produced by a flow of information from the consumer to the production system, and of materials in the opposite direction, subject to the influence of communication models (Peri, 2005). Consequently, companies cannot be guided by only profitability, efficiency, and effectiveness when producing goods and services, but must also take their greater societal impact into account (Golinelli, 2009). Quality is holistic and a property that can be translated into the production and marketing of products and services by using models and methods of systemic thought. It can thus respond to the needs of modern organizational systems, which are themselves continuously changing (Fassio, 2016a). Within this conceptual framework, the Systemic Food Design.it website was designed to facilitate consumer understanding of the complex relationship between food production and supply chain, with consideration of both packaging and raw materials. The goal was and remains to promote ideas of food product quality based on both sustainability of raw materials and sustainability of the life cycle of primary, secondary, and tertiary packaging through, for instance, the adoption of eco-design packaging, circular economy, and privileging a reliance on local resources. The website, as an interactive tool meant for educational purposes, focuses on such principle concepts as the significant connection between Transdisciplinary Case Studies on Design for Food and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817821-8.00003-5

Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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the quality of a container and that of its contents; a circular economy that promotes waste as a resource for other systems; determining factors on system quality such as environmental, economic, and social sustainability, along with sensory factors; and the role of consumer awareness of entire food system structures in making informed choices. The site is an instrument designed to raise awareness, implement educational mechanisms that promote local labor and waste reduction, and reconnect economy and society by emphasizing a healthy food selection and the reduction of energy and water consumption. Indeed, the circular economy for food (CEFF) is a holistic investigative environment in which production and distribution interact with nature, the land, and the community in a constant flow of resources, energy, and knowledge (Fassio & Tecco, 2018). The current food system’s geopolitical challenge, at a global as well as local level, still remains the transformation of our productive model toward a correct management of natural (Lovins, Lovins, & Hawken, 1999) and cultural capitals (Bourdieu, 1980), by respecting planetary limits (Rockstr€ om et al., 2009) while offering at the same time a fair space for civil society (Raworth, 2017). To reach this transformation, we need to avoid compromising relations with the best raw material supplier mankind has ever known (Lovins et al., 1999) and start proposing urban policies that understand that “circularity” already belongs to humans and the context in which they live (Fassio & Minotti, 2019). For example, one of these policies could be education and information activities to help people start avoiding waste at home, which, in the case of Italy, has an economic value of around 4.9 euros per week (Waste Watcher, 2020). Beginning with Professor Franco Fassio’s research at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, the project was further supported by gastronomicrelated content produced by students enrolled in two courses of the master’s program in Gastronomic and Tourism Heritage Promotion and Management: Systemic Approach to Gastronomy (A.A. 2012–2013) and Systemic Food Design (A.A. 2015–2016). In its early stages, in 2012–13, the National Consortium for the Recovery and Recycling of Cellulose-based Packaging (Comieco) financed the applied research and the site’s development. In 2015–16, the site received additional financial backing from the National Consortium for the Recycling and Recovery of Steel Packaging (Ricrea) and the National Consortium for the Collection, Recovery and Recycling of Wooden Packaging (Rilegno).

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4.2 Website design rationale From the perspective of those working in the food industry, the website seeks to provide a view on those primary, though sometimes difficult to see, “cause-and-effect” connections such as the relationships between production and packaging, and sales and consumption (Fig. 4.1). This focus allows site visitors a systematic means to investigate and reflect on the various components of quality food production and packaging. Moreover, Systemic Food Design provides opportunities for users to consider the multidisciplinary world of gastronomic sciences as well as questions to guide them in creating their own supply chains for 20 commonly used foods and beverages. By following a production system’s main phases, the user is able to observe and evaluate each product’s life cycle, content quality (raw materials), and container quality (packaging). The site outlines, for example, various specific supply chains, as follows: 10 dealing with paper and cardboard packaging (marmalade, potato crisps, oil, chicken, beer, pasta, biscuits, ice cream, eggs, cheese); 5 related to the

Fig. 4.1 http://www.systemicfooddesign.it/ homepage. (Credit: Franco Fassio.)

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use of steel (tuna, chocolate, coffee, corn, peeled tomatoes); and another 5 that make use of wood (apples, small fruits, pallets, wine, whiskey). The user selects a supply chain and takes on the role of producer for the selected food chain (Fig. 4.2). After a brief historical-geographical introduction to the selected food system, the interactive user experience continues with 15 questions, during which “players” learn to identify a product’s main features and design their own (Fig. 4.3). Choices are evaluated based on their positive and negative impact across the areas of environment, economics, social sustainability, and sensory quality, resulting in a final approximate value and “System Quality” percentage, a multifaceted definition of holistic and dynamic quality related to ecosystems and their rhythms. Here, “quality” indicates the sum of objective and subjective natural (evolutionary) factors present in a set of variables that characterize the social, environmental, economic, and sensory sustainability of a certain product or service that enable it to satisfy the expressed or implied needs of the local ecosystem (Fassio, 2016a).

Fig. 4.2 Supply chain selection page. (Credit: Franco Fassio.)

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Fig. 4.3 Once a production chain is selected, the user is brought to a historicalgeographic introduction to the system. (Credit: Franco Fassio.)

The site’s assessment criteria can be broken down as follows: • environmental sustainability: the physical and relational balance durational capacity, along with quality and reproducibility of natural resources, preservation of biodiversity, and guarantee of ecosystem integrity. The underlying principle here lies in the controlled use of natural resources, preserving cultural identity and place, which is directly dependent on the nature of the human-environment relationship. In addition, environmental sustainability privileges human activities that use resources without exhausting an ecosystem’s reproducibility limits while simultaneously enhancing any surplus in a circular perspective, making it become resources for the same or a new system. • economic sustainability: the generation of income and work in a sustainable manner, and one that also achieves eco-efficiency or the rational use of available resources and diminishing reliance on nonrenewable resources. Sustainable economic development takes four existing forms of capital into account (economic, environmental, human, and cultural)

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while protecting those free goods considered intangible capital (those with no market price) and related assets. • social sustainability: the guaranteed and equal access to basic rights within a community, such as safety, health, and education, in addition to guaranteed welfare conditions (including access to information, recreation, peace, sociability, human and animal welfare, etc.). Social sustainability also refers to the preservation of local cultures and traditions through opportunities of expression for indigenous peoples and, above all, ethical and respectful social conditions for workers. • sensory quality: the consideration and integration of aesthetics, nutrition, and taste features as salient food “ingredients,” given that a careful, balanced diet based on natural products is a “sustainable pleasure.” The criteria here, the definitions and content, are the result of an extensive collaborative research endeavor that involved 67 participants who created various types of content for the site. Specifically, 300 questions, 900 answers, 20 summary outlines for the supply chains, 250 glossary words, and about 100 “curiosities” or informational items related to food chain details and relationships with other systems. Moreover, the project in its entirety comprises a bibliography and sitography of 157 references, divided into general sources and specific sources for each product, together with 96 websites. Answering the 15 questions requires approximately 10 minutes, during which time users systematically discover the inputs and outputs comprising each supply chain. Using specifically selected graphics, the approach encourages users to consider the concept of circular economy, whereby an input, a necessary resource for the production of a thing, typically leads to outputs after its processing, or waste that in turn serves as a resource for the same system or different supply chains. The first four questions relate to raw materials, the following six focus on various transformation processes, and the final five relate to packaging. The user experience also includes navigating from producer to processor, distributor, consumer, and then to waste collector. Given its value as a generator of new materials and products, waste here is frequently defined as a “secondary product.” Next is a detailed series of the main phases and production system players, concise representations of the product’s life cycle subsequently presented in the final diagrams. Visually, these elements are presented as follows: the main phases in bold, inputs in white italics, and outputs in black. Orange arrows indicate relationships connecting an input and a phase, and red triangles underscore innovative areas yet to be realized, in particular critical phases

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Fig. 4.4 Inputs and outputs of the supply chain. (Credit: Franco Fassio.)

or items. Broadly speaking, the various players and phases are white and outlined, whereas inputs and outputs are colored (Fig. 4.4). The final section of the site allows users to download a summary graphic for the chosen system. To foster public curiosity about consumption and supply chain issues, results can be shared on social media (Fig. 4.5). Drawing on the quality concept defined as Good, Clean, and Fair (Petrini, 2005), the final system quality is expressed as a percentage and represents the sum of the results obtained in environmental, social, and economic sustainability as well as sensory quality. Although it takes different scientific opinions into account, the assessment only produces approximate results. Moreover, users will never achieve a final system quality percentage of 100% (intentionally) since, from a systems approach, expressing system boundaries and therefore declaring that a system can, for example, achieve “zero environmental impact,” can actually mislead consumers seeking greater awareness with regard to the impact of an action or choice.

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Fig. 4.5 Summary diagram of the production chain. (Credit: Franco Fassio.)

4.3 The website multifunctionality 4.3.1 Preventing waste at the source In 2017, each inhabitant of the European Union generated 173 kg of packaging waste (varying from 64 kg per inhabitant in Bulgaria and 231 kg per inhabitant in Luxembourg) (Eurostat, 2017). The total quantity of generated packaging materials has tended to remain stable in the decade 2007–17 (from 70.9 million tons in 2007 to 71 million tons in 2008), but currently there is increased consumer awareness regarding the environmental impact of packaging, especially food packaging. The food product supply chain uses 8.5 tons of packaging yearly; 52% for food and 48% for beverages. Packaging disposal in the food sector costs circa 230–250 million euros per year, with some 3000 kg of food entering Italian households yearly, of which 200 kg, or 6.6%, is packaging weight alone. Given that about 150 kg of food a year is wasted, we can deduce that the average household throws

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out approximately 10 kg of packaging yearly (Eurostat, 2010). According to a survey carried out by the Consumer Packaging Observatory on a sample of Italian consumers, the environmental impact of packaging is a factor that influences 43% of consumers in the choice of food products. Furthermore, 48% say they have stopped buying products with excess packaging, 22% have reduced the purchase of products with plastic packaging, and 23% have increased the purchase of bulk products (Zucconi & De Carne, 2020). Investing in prevention and innovation is vital to establishing valuable relationships and transmitting knowledge between the system’s players, a mechanism fundamental to meeting common and individual goals as well as developing a widespread culture, one that identifies as a socio-cultural system attentive to production process sustainability (Fassio, 2016b). Systemicfooddesign.it promotes consumer awareness of waste prevention and teaches producers and distributors to adopt strategies to minimize the negative environmental and community impact of production and distribution. Moving toward these goals requires first using materials already in circulation and in line with the circular economy; when using and producing new materials is necessary, material resources should diversify as much as possible, with a consideration of their intended use and environmental conditions (availability of resources and possibility of disposal).

4.3.2 Educate users to become aware consumers With the goal of building cultural bridges between the different actors in the human society “organism” increasingly motivated by product sustainably, the site provides opportunities for developing dialogue between the various parties. However, attention must be paid to the ongoing need, never neutral, of seizing user attention through meaning-laden symbols, and how this contrasts with the development of holistic communication that describes the entire food system’s qualities. In this context, the container becomes both an instrument of persuasive seduction and an identity card specific to the system involved, a way to grasp the content’s articulated structure and therefore a modal trigger point for a communicative (and perhaps multichannel) connection between the system and the consumer. Thus, the informational asymmetry between producer and consumer is reduced, allowing the latter to distinguish quality differences among various products and to make reliable and swift choices in line with his own needs and expectations.

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Clearly what emerges, then, is the need to simplify complexity without trivializing it (Einstein, 1939) while making consumers aware as coproducers (Petrini, 2009) who make responsible and informed choices and form direct connections between the food on their plates and the people who produce that food. In short, the ability to recognize the intrinsic value of food and its value as connected to its system quality, as well as being prepared to pay a fair price for it. It is precisely these system dynamics, the “thinking in systems” (Meadows, 2008), that can help evolve our intuitions regarding the whole food system, to sharpen our ability to understand the parts, to see the interconnections, and to be creative and courageous about redesigning the system. With these goals in mind, the site simplifies 20 rather complex supply chains and presents them in diagram form to understand how consumer purchases influence a broad system. As a result, understanding is promoted, in particular of the value of sustainably produced food, a value comprised of material and immaterial factors rather than the price alone (Petrini, 2013). Although a commodity’s price is defined exclusively according to market logic, its value can give voice to several aspects related to its production (Fassio, 2016b). The current economic system limits producers in determining the price of their products, since many quantitative constraints force them to accept any value imposed by the distributive system. Every year, this situation results in halting agricultural activity for hundreds of producers, sending a clear message that if we don’t guarantee the profitability of food with a value based on fairness to human health and healthy ecosystems, we will find ourselves in the future being forced to make do with food of increasingly lesser quality.

4.3.3 In addition to the content, consider the container Leonardo da Vinci, considered the first holistic thinker (Capra, 2009), proposed that human ingenuity will never match the inventiveness or beauty inherent in nature, where nothing lacks or exceeds in its inventions. So, taking inspiration from how nature spontaneously protects its products and preserves their freshness, within the gastronomic tradition and context, humans have learned important lessons on how to “design” containers suited to preservation of their culinary products, in both form and function. Such ingenuity can be seen when developing packaging that guarantees food preservation and protection. Moreover, these containers have often

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been credited for boosting the flavor of the content or providing quality indications, in the same way as a communications interface (Fassio, 2015). The specific use conditions for the contents determine the main features of the “container,” whereas various environmental, distribution, and consumption factors determine the container’s functions and durability, so that the preservation process is supported rather than impaired by internal and external agents. The resulting dialectic, two-way relationship between content and container is often an inseparable combination in which it is difficult to determine where one ends and the other begins. This healthy and functional symbiosis, however, has failed over time due to the requirements imposed by the large amounts and distances as inherent factors in the modern commercialization of food products. Thus, the symbiosis was sacrificed to provide a support service for the product’s consumption, rather than the content itself. In this sense, primary packaging has lost sight of the simple principle of natural inspiration of the form connected to the function, saturating itself with symbols as a result of the need of a linear production model that is not very integrated with the territory and community (Bistagnino, 2013). Content, as a result, lost its identity, frequently becoming subservient to the marketing, efficiency, and sustainability needs of the system, evidenced, for example, in packaging lifespan (very often too brief, especially when compared to the materials used) and the oversizing of packaging systems (Langella, 2009). Content’s subordination to container is emblematic of a development model that paradoxically goes from the extreme aesthetic quest for very short-life products intended for immediate consumption to the commercial need to extend the shelf life of long-life products. In both cases, a risk of creating excessive dissonance between product appearance and consumer expectations is present, which makes the content’s true character increasingly distant and imperceptible (Gallen, 2005). Recently, alongside the awareness of environmentally intrusive packaging, we have seen an increase in demand for food products of genuine, natural, and family-produced content. Completing the circle is a return to packaging that adapts to the form of the content and, in addition to being protective, takes on a new communicative function in an ethical way. Hence the systemicfooddesign.it site’s claim of “for quality of content and container.” Defining the quality of a food that is believed to be good cannot be separated from the sustainable features required by its packaging.

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4.3.4 The “system” quality for a transition toward circular economy In the food sector, designing for sustainability (meant as environmental, economic, social, and sensory) is more effective if it becomes “systemic” if, in addition to relating to the individual product components, it also takes the entire system into consideration while supporting consumer comprehension of content and container value. In this way, food becomes a fertile ground for the implementation of a circular economy’s principles, a perfect field for testing the new CEFF approach to raw material and waste that (Fassio & Tecco, 2019). Circular economy is an alternative model based on the assumption that a shift from a linear economy (take, make, and dispose) to a circular and regenerative one that dialogues with nature is needed because the current economy creates an apparent fragile abundance (Fassio & Tecco, 2018). The site’s function, which connects every user choice to the input and output generation, with chronological and ascending order as the production chain is completed, supports this objective. While considering his own production, the user is thus led to reflect on such aspects as the circular economy and the current EU economic model that sets out measures to reduce and give value to every type of output (European Commission, 2020). Preserving and promoting natural capital by fostering use of renewable resources and optimizing resource yield by circulating reusable materials in both technological and biological cycles means planning for the regeneration, renewal, and recycling of components and materials that circulate between various players along the chain. Alongside the search for more efficient systems, these characteristics form the theoretical basis for the circular economy, and are presented in various situations linked to several chains. Creating a “zero-waste” plan means thinking in phases that gradually give value to the various secondary products generated until waste is reduced to zero. In this scenario, however, systemic thought or the ability to understand how the parties mutually influence each other, becomes crucial (Von Bertalanffy, 1968). Although we can attempt to break down the complexity into a set of independent subproblems by determining linear and competitive development models, in the approximation of the model, we lose the transdisciplinarity (Piaget, 1970) of the scientific and intellectual approach that aims for full comprehension of the present world’s complexity. System quality extends beyond the circular economy, in its emphasis on both the “circular” reasoning already explained and in our social and production

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model and in nature, finding systems within systems that, in positive relation to one another, create something more than the static sum of their individual elements (Fassio, 2011). Conversely, however, a poorly conducted action within the system creates a negative sum that disrupts and weakens the system. At that point, the more resilient the system, the more it reasons with complex systems that can adapt, accumulate diversity (Benyus, 1997), and restrain excesses internally by using the power of boundaries, and the more it will repair damage and even predict it, ideally. The Systemic Food Design website aims to encourage thinking in terms of systems and gradually realizing that the relationship between observer and observed object leads to direct experience and a culture of prejudgment, whereas the system involved when a purchase is made goes well beyond what the senses perceive (Fig. 4.6).

Fig. 4.6 Final assessment page that gives a total percentage value for “System quality.” (Credit: Franco Fassio.)

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4.4 Final remarks Systemicfooddesign.it serves to prevent generation of waste, educate consumers, and create an alliance between content (raw materials) and container (food packaging) for a circular economy. Behind its playful interface, the website presents cutting-edge reasoning and innovative logic, with some 40.654 people (data from June 2020) having tried their hand at becoming an entrepreneur. Since the 2015 expo, many Italian high schools and institutions, such as the Ludovico Geymonat Institute in Tradate (Varese), have included the site in their programs. This game is atypical, given that it takes on average 10–15 minutes to play. As such, it is not comparable to other online games that tend to require an average of 5–7 minutes. Over the course of 6 years, starting with the site launch in 2013, the resulting data confirms an ever-increasing interest in truly understanding what one eats as well as what systems are subsidized by buying certain products. The average site user is clearly interested in becoming an active supporter of a community that unites the human race in recognizing the entire Earth as a “homeland” (Morin, 2014). From this perspective, enacting policies of cooperation, an economy of relationships for common welfare is crucial. What emerges then is a vision that values relationship capital, or the realization we all are part of an infinite system connected in time and space. Systems design applied to food, as demonstrated through the site’s playing options, thus offers the designer a new role: a designer of relationships that, if developed well, become cultural bridges that unite the sensibilities, goals, and ideals of producers and consumers. In May 2017, the site won the European Week for Waste Reduction Award (EWWR 2016) for best education tool for the circular economy in food. Already in April 2017, it had won the national award among more than 1500 applications for waste prevention practices (SERR 2016) for the original contribution that the site makes to environmental communication and to the understanding of what each of us eats.

References Benyus, J. (1997). Biomimicry. Innovation inspired by nature. New York: William Morrow & Co. Bistagnino, L. (2013). Introduzione in a cura di De Giorgi C. In Packaging sostenibile? Metodo multicriteria di valutazione del packaging alimentare Poliedro – Pollenzo Index Environmental and Economics Design. Torino: Umberto Allemandi & Co. Bourdieu, P. (1980). Le capital social: Notes provisoires. Actes de la Recherche En Sciences Sociales, 31, 2–3.

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Capra, F. (2009). La scienza universale. Arte e natura nel genio di Leonardo. Milano: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli. Einstein, A. (1939). Science and religion, Panarchy. In Princeton theological seminary on May 19, 1939, New Jersey. European Commission. (2020). Circular economy action plan. For a cleaner and more competitive Europe, Bruxelles. Eurostat. (2010). Europe in figures. Eurostat yearbook 2010. Belgium: Publications Office of the European Union. Eurostat. (2017). Packaging waste statistics 2017. Belgium: Publications Office of the European Union. Fassio, F. (2011). A new event model with a reduced environmental impact. In L. Bistagnino (Ed.), Systemic design. Designing the productive and environmental sustainability (2nd ed.). Cuneo: Slow Food Editore. Fassio, F. (2015). Bello da mangiare, ricerca scientifica coordinata da Grimaldi P. Universita` degli Studi di Scienze Gastronomiche per i 30 annni di Comieco www.ricerchedea.it/ bellodamangiare. Fassio, F. (2016a). Local, a food shop for system quality. In L. Bistagnino (Ed.), Micro Macro. The entirety of systemic micro relations generates the new economic-productive model. Milano: Edizioni Ambiente. Fassio, F. (2016b). Interaction between man and label. From the valorisation of systemic quality to the internet of things. In P. Grimaldi (Ed.), A long and beautiful story. 50 years of Eurostampa. Cuneo: Pollenzo University Press. Fassio, F., & Minotti, B. (2019). Circular economy for food policy: The case of RePoPP project in the City of Turin (Italy). Sustainability, 11(21), 6078. Special issue: Circular economy and sustainable strategies. Fassio, F., & Tecco, N. (2018). Circular economy for food: Materia, Energia e Conoscenza in Circolo. Milano, Italy: Edizioni Ambiente. Fassio, F., & Tecco, N. (2019). Circular economy for food: A systemic interpretation of 40 case histories in the food system in their relationships with SDGs. Systems, 7(3), 43. https://doi.org/10.3390/systems7030043. Gallen, C. (2005). Le design alimentaire: quelle place pour l’originalite dans la cuisine? In Communication pour le colloque interdisciplinaire “Faire la cuisine” 12, 13, 14 Decembre. Toulouse: ESC. Golinelli, G. (2009). L’approccio sistemico vitale: nuovi orizzonti di ricerca per il governo dell’impresa. In Sinergie. Rivista di studi e ricerche n.79 (pp. 11–24). Verona: CUEIM, Consorzio Universitario di Economia Industriale e Manageriale. Langella, C. (2009). Soluzioni.di packaging.design sostenibile ispirate alla natura. Bollettino AIM, 64(2/3), 23–31. Lovins, A. B., Lovins, L. H., & Hawken, P. (1999). A road map for natural capitalism. Harvard Business Review, 77, 145 (HBR paperback reprint 2000). Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. White River Junction, VT, USA: Chelsea Green Publishing. Morin, E. (2014). La methode 5. L’humanite de l’humanite – L’identite humaine. Paris: Seuil. Peri, C. (2005). Oltre i sistemi qualita` (p. 2). Milano: Hoepli. Petrini, C. (2005). Buono, Pulito e Giusto. Principi di nuova gastronomia. Torino: Einaudi. Petrini, C. (2009). Terra Madre. Come non farci mangiare dal cibo. Cuneo: Giunti e Slow Food Editore. Petrini, C. (2013). Cibo e liberta`. In Slow food: storie di gastronomia per la liberazione. Cuneo: Giunti e Slow Food Editore. Piaget, J. (1970). Structuralism. New York: Harper & Row. Raworth, K. (2017). Doughnut economics: SevenWays to think like a 21st-century economist. White River Junction, VT, USA: Chelsea Green Publishing.

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˚ ., Chapin, F. S., III, Lambin, E., et al. Rockstr€ om, J., Steen, W. L., Noone, K., Persson, A (2009). Planetary boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity. Ecology and Society, 14, 32. Von Bertalanffy, L. (1968). Teoria generale dei sistemi. Fondamenti, sviluppi, applicazioni. New York: Braziller. Waste Watcher. (2020). Rapporto Waste Watcher 2020. Bologna www.sprecozero.it. Zucconi, S., & De Carne, N. (2020). Consumption evolution and impact on packaging. In Keynote speech at packaging speaks green, international forum on sustainable packaging, 20th Febuary, Bologna.

CHAPTER FIVE

Transitioning from food systems toward food ecosystems Pedro Reissiga and Adrian Lebendikerb a

University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina University of General Sarmiento, Los Polvorines, Argentina

b

5.1 Introduction In recent years, we have seen how different technologies and knowledge flows have been undermining the partitions that separated each of the compartments that made up what we called productive value chains and their context. In the case of food, it is generally called the “Food System.” The concept of a value chain, constituted by links that are organized one in front of the other, assumes the linearity of the transformation process, reflecting a technical version somewhat more sophisticated than the popular and scholastic motto: “from the countryside to the city” or specifically in the food context from “farm to fork.” Just as the 21st century paved the way for trans-disciplines to be able to address complex or wicked problems, we understand that Food Design can be used as a systemic and integral approach to better comprehend the enormous and highly complex food universe. To this extent, we offer the following definition of Food Design, taken from the Latin American Food Design Network (www.lafooddesign.org), which states that: Food Design includes any deliberate action that improves our relationship with food in diverse scales, senses and instances, both individually and collectively. These actions can refer to the edible product or material itself, as well as to its context, experiences, processes, technologies, practices, environments, health, systems, etc.

More than categories, these are the recognition of the scope of food in all its existence. The intention of this definition is to frame a perspective and attitude based on a critical and propositive thinking. The three key words in this definition are: action, improvement, and relationship. The core of the complexity of the food ecosystem is defined by its transversal nature, including the transactions in a context of high volatility and Transdisciplinary Case Studies on Design for Food and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817821-8.00017-5

Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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uncertainty that have promoted movements of business de-integration, development of new ventures, micro and macro articulations between companies, institutions and markets, promoting processes of co-creation, co-design, transitional design, and so on of products, services, and experiences. By transversal we include: trans-disciplinary, trans-actoral, trans-territorial, and probably just about any other consideration we tend to isolate for analytical purposes.

5.2 System versus ecosystem Why talk about innovation ecosystems and not about innovation systems? The administration sciences usually take examples of nature or biological sciences to baptize with the prefix “eco” certain empirical models that are used to explain phenomena typical of the business world. An example of this is when we hear about “entrepreneurial ecosystems,” “innovation ecosystems,” “productive ecosystems,” and so on. By virtue of this, the difference between innovation ecosystems and innovation systems would be that the former have a self-evolutionary nature, whereas the latter would serve to describe the network of agents and the set of actions, referring to a given territory, that allow the introduction and development of innovations. Applying this to the food innovation ecosystem, we have the network of actors, their links, the environment in which they move, and the actions aimed at generating, introducing, and stimulating food innovations. Later in the chapter, we discuss in detail, each of the elements that constitute this definition. The incorporation of high technology in a primary instance of the food production process, such as the development of new seeds or the use of big data and the internet of things (IoT) for precision planting, compared to consumption experiences that eliminate all intermediations, such as agrotourism farms or restaurants with their own gardens that are promoted as experiences on social networks, put into crisis the linear idea of the agri-food value chain. It also introduces us into a network model in which the exchange of food and complementary materials, energy, and knowledge can occur in multiple directions, generating products, services, and experiences at any point of the ecosystem. All of this suggests great speed of change and the advance toward new forms of organization, governance, and intervention. These productive ecosystems must start from enhancing the long-term evolutionary processes existing in natural resources, manufactures, and

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services. The achievements, capabilities, and built assets of these productive ecosystems are a starting point, overcoming its limitations and creating conditions for its dissemination and expansion. It implies a collective exercise of society to favor a virtuous interaction between companies, markets, and institutions (Kosacoff, 2017). The traditional view of productive or value chains puts the emphasis on vertical linkages (company-company/supplier-customer) between the different agents of the chain in order to study which parts of the process appropriate the greatest added value. With a more comprehensive and systemic approach, the concept of the productive weave appears as an economic space for the creation of competencies and productive exchanges of goods and/or services, which includes one or several companies or nuclei, their suppliers and customers, and the set of public and private institutions to which they are linked. Their relations go beyond the links associated with selling/purchasing and include a set of exchanges, tangible and intangible as well as formal and informal, of information flows, productive experiences, knowledge (coded and tacit), and concurrent development strategies for the future. In successful cases these links create common languages and codes, facilitate coordination processes, improve the specialization and division of activities, and become a space for generating genuine competitive advantages (Bisang et al., 2005). At the same time, improvements in the connections allow public and private agents to recognize themselves as part of a network of common exchanges that seeks to obtain concurrent objectives (Korsunsky, Erbes, & Yoguel, 2007). Also from a social economy perspective, the conceptual framework of productive or value weave becomes relevant with respect to value chains. For this segment of the economy or for those who observe it from this vantage point, the value weave is constituted by a set of ventures that are articulated between peers, horizontally with their input suppliers and buyers as well as vertically with the services of technical support (new technologies that optimize work) and diagonally for financial considerations. All this is based on a common floor, which is the territory, to generate greater economic added value for workers and entrepreneurship, and therefore for the territory as well (Caracciolo, 2013). In addition to economic relations, social, cultural, political, and symbolic relationships are developed. Based on the aforementioned, we see that the model of productive weaves is more pertinent than that of the value chains when analyzing the conditions for innovation, because all kinds of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal links between agents are revealed for those who circulate

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goods, services, knowledge, and experiences. At the same time, it is useful when intervening in these networks, promoting or stimulating innovations, and correcting the weaknesses that hinder them. Likewise, as we have already indicated, recently the terms of productive ecosystems or innovation ecosystems have been included to sometimes indicate indistinctly, productive weaves and intervention devices to stimulate innovation based on the concept of social networks and of varied articulations of actors from different backgrounds. In order to clarify the use of some terms, we are interested in pointing out what is understood as an ecosystem. According to Perry (1994), ecosystems are characterized as a network of interactions and interdependencies between the parties involved. Animals and microorganisms require the energy supplied by plants and, in turn, they cannot exist without the animals and microorganisms that are involved in nutrient recycling, which in turn regulates the ecosystem’s processes. Note that interdependence within an ecosystem is related to the function that each part fulfills. Some functions within ecosystems can be developed by more than one species. It is from this perspective that we consider synergies, stabilization, and fuzzy limits to be the core characteristics of an ecosystem. We use the term “synergy” to indicate that the behavior of the entire system cannot be predicted by the behavior or integral characteristics of any of its parts or of the system when these are considered separately. Essentially, the concept stems from a basic property of matter: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Virtually, all patterns of nature emerge from interactions of organisms and their environment, from different species and from different levels of the global hierarchy. The result is synergy, an interaction of local and holistic forces that generate complexity, dynamic stability, and unpredictability. In this context the term “stability” is a simple but complex concept since it does not mean absence of change, but rather that the system can move to the rhythm of the transformations in order to conserve its properties or functions. Disturbance processes, growth, and descent produce continuous changes in nature. The stability of the system means that the changes are kept within certain limits and the key and potential processes are protected and preserved. The term “fuzzy limits” is considered given the fact that, unlike an organism, an ecosystem has no skin that clearly separates it from the outside world. Ecosystems are defined by connections, and the connectors extend through time and space to integrate each local ecosystem into a network of growing ecosystems that make up landscapes, regions, and eventually the entire biosphere.

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5.3 Senses of food health Moving toward a big picture of the food universe, we are interested in demystifying oversimplified terms such as food health. Toward this goal we propose the term “Senses of Food Health,” understanding “sense” in its double meaning, as sensorial and as meaning (Reissig & Lebendiker, 2019). We seek to give a wider sense to the concept of food health while we explore our sensoriality (added to our cognition) in order to envision and develop new and better connections to food and its experiences. We propose eight different and articulated senses of health, which constitute a point of reference that gives meaning and direction to the term “food health” as a result of a food ecosystem where, without being naive or idealistic, the actors involved achieve shared benefits (Fig. 5.1). 1. Health of the edible product. This refers to the quality of the food regarding its nutritional and nonharmful properties. 2. Environmental health of the food ecosystem. This refers to the environmental impact that occurs in the different instances of the food cycle (described below). 3. Health of the food ecosystem economy. This refers to the generation and distribution of value among the actors involved in the food ecosystem. 4. Social health in the food ecosystem. This refers to the respect and dignification of the workers who participate in the food ecosystem, as well as to community and collaborative practices, social innovation, and food cocreation processes that constitute the social livelihoods of the ecosystem. 5. Health of cultural identity. This refers to the rescue and protection of raw materials, recipes, techniques, utensils, and ways of storing and consuming of different communities and territories that make up our tangible and intangible gastronomical heritage. 6. Health of the food subject. This refers to the physical and economic accessibility of sufficient quantity of food of all people, to satisfy their nutritional needs and preferences, in order to lead an active and healthy life. 7. Cognitive, sensory, and emotional food health. This refers to the positive experience that the alimentary persona has with food, including good information about its composition, sensory stimuli, and the situations that make the emotional health of our relationship with food. 8. Health of food sovereignty. This is based on the right of each and all people to define their own food production, security, and access policies according to their sustainable development goals.

Fig. 5.1 The eight senses of food health.

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5.4 The food ecosystem We define the food ecosystem as a natural and social system composed of six basic factors: instances, actors, interactions, elements that are exchanged, environments, and territorial scales whose meaning is to create, transform, market, acquire, and appropriate (ingest) food, capable of being intervened, in pursuit of a nonindiscriminate use, economically and environmentally sustainable, socially fair, and with a sense of health. Having established this meaning, let’s now examine the instance cycle, components and the relationships that exist between them, the kind of elements they exchange, and the environment and scale in which this occurs. The diagram in Fig. 5.2 shows schematically how these six aspects can be visualized in their entirety. Following is a description of each of the six aspects shown.

5.4.1 Instances of the food cycle These are the nuclei of specialization, the set of activities that account for the intervention process ranging from raw material to the use and consumption of food (intake). These are traditionally classified as primary (extractive), secondary (transformation), and tertiary (marketing and commercial) activities. We use a model called the food cycle (Reissig, 2014), which includes five instances from production to intake and considers the five interfaces connecting these instances. Unlike other models, especially those of the value chain, the food cycle, in addition to the instances of production, transformation, and commercialization, includes two more instances: acquisition (purchase) and appropriation (eating). These reflect the place where 65% or more of edible experiences occur, that is, the domestic environment and where we actively participate. The percentage of home meals varies according to age, culture, geography, and socioeconomic group, but the home is still the place where we eat most of our food. The food cycle occurs within the context of the food ecosystem according to each moment and place, but always in dialogue with the general conditions of the rest of the elements that make up the latter. It is within the pushes and pulls of those conditions and instances that they tend to achieve more or less stable food cycles, that is, more or less successful ones (Fig. 5.3).

Fig. 5.2 The mapping of a food ecosystem (example given for Argentina).

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Fig. 5.3 The food cycle.

The five basic instances of the food cycle and their interfaces are composed and distinguished by the following activities and actors that compose them: (in parentheses and italics the most popular and simplified name). 1. Food Source (production). This is the source or origin of all food, whether from plant or animals (also synthetic). It includes production practices in dialogue with their territories, with different scales, processes, and results as there are biodiversity, although the trend in the last 50 years has been toward large-scale monoculture for the purpose of an intense increase in productivity. The main actor here is the producer; the farmer, rancher, fisherman, and so on. Waste in this instance is the leftovers of the crop- or animal-raising practice. The production/transformation interface is made up of logistic aspects of transport and infrastructure (transport). 2. Processing (transformation). The transformation of the natural product, from minimum to maximum, on any scale from the artisanal to the industrial and in all its variants. There are foods that necessarily require processing (ground wheat transformed into flour), others that are

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optional (ready-to-eat lettuce), and others that are only possible because of their high degree of processing (reconstituted chicken medallions). The main actor here is the processor; the craftsman, industrial, broker, and so on. The wastes in this instance are those generated to a greater extent by the industry and to a lesser extent by the artisan processes. The processing/selling interface is made up of logistical aspects of distribution and infrastructure (distribution). 3. Commercialization (selling). This instance includes communication, advertising, marketing, intermediaries, storage, and so on, which make the sales channel and means of food selling. These can refer to either ingredients purchased for future use (market, supermarket, etc.) or of ready-to-eat as in restaurants, delivery, vending machines, street food, and others. The main actor here is the merchant; the businessman, shop keeper, and so on. The waste in this instance (commercialization) is the food that is removed from the point of purchase given its proximity to the expiration date, those primary products that have passed from their point of maturity, and the leftovers of food made in gastronomic venues. The selling/purchase interface is made up of the dynamics and dialogue (direct or indirect) between supply and demand, demand and supply, a mediated flow between both sides of the other formats of exchange of information, energy, and forces (purchase decision). 4. Acquisition (purchase). This instance includes the purchase, transfer, storage, and administration of the food purchased for later use. It may also include bartering or other ways of acquiring food (e.g., co-ops, coupons, etc.). The main actor here is the buyer, be it an institutional purchasing manager, housekeeper, individual or collective alimentary persona, and so on. The waste in this instance is the leftovers or expired food that is not consumed. The acquisition/appropriation interface is made up of practical, personal, and social aspects prior to eating (cooking). 5. Appropriation (eating). This instance refers to everything that implies the complete experience of eating (sensory, organoleptic, nutrition, etc.), including its preparation (cooking) and its respective practice in relation to space, time, people, interfaces, and so on. The main actor here is the cook and eater, individual or collective. The waste in this instance is the leftovers or unused outputs of the cooking process, or ready-to-eat food that is not consumed food as well as its packaging. The appropriation/production/transformation interface is shaped by the possibility that waste and leftover from instance five will be reused in

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production and transformation. It is also possible to strengthen the link with the producer until they become “strategic accomplices” (recycle). It should be noted that in all of these instances different types of waste are generated that can leave the cycle (e.g., join other bio-economic processes, such as the generation of biofuel) or be re-incorporated into another instance (e.g., transformation of waste into compost). According to type of waste, we propose some relevant strategies for the reduction/elimination of waste in order to develop sustainable innovation actions. • Care: do with knowledge, attention, respect, and affection • Optimize: do with knowledge, attention, and imagination • Re-cycle: seek to take advantage of something in cycles after the original • Re-configure: transform something to acquire a new use • Re-signify: look for other senses different from the original • Reuse: look for other uses different from the original

5.4.2 Actors Once the stages of the food cycle have been defined, we can now describe the type of actor according to the degree of specialization that comes from participation in each of the core activities related to each instance of the cycle. • Food source. Actors linked to crop development consisting of planting, cultivating, harvesting, and so on (can be under either the artisanal or industrial modality). Examples include: seed-developing companies, crop support companies, rural entrepreneurs. Chambers of commerce, secretariat of agribusiness, export promotion agency, sector workers, unions, certification, secretariat of science, technology and productive innovation, software providers, ICT and IoT, machinery suppliers agricultural, media, agro technical schools, universities, professionals, consultants, fairs and congresses, logistics companies, storage companies, foreign trade services, intellectual property, financing providers, public services, and so on. • Processing. Actors linked to the transformation of the raw material (can be under either the artisanal or industrial modality). Examples include: food industries, artisanal and small-scale food enterprises, business chambers, secretariat of agribusiness, export promotion agency, certifiers, suppliers of software and information and communications technology (ICT), suppliers of industrial equipment and industrial devices, media, schools, universities, professionals, workers in the sector, unions,

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consultants, design, advertising, public relations, and promotion agencies, fairs and congresses, influencers, logistics companies, storage companies, foreign trade services, intellectual property, financing providers, public services, and so on. • Commercialization. Actors linked to the wholesale and retail sale of food, whether or not it was processed. Examples include: food wholesalers, food retailers, restaurants and institutional food servers, hotels, food trucks, business chambers, ministry of commerce, software providers, ICT and IoT, workers in the sector, unions, suppliers of commercial and gastronomic equipment, producers of direct sales to users, agribusiness enterprises, schools, universities, chefs, professionals, architects, designers, consultants, design agencies, advertising, public relations, and promotion, influencers, fairs and congresses, logistics companies, storage companies, ministry of tourism, tourism agencies, intellectual property, financing providers, public services, and so on. • Acquisition. Actors involved in sourcing, purchasing, transferring, and storing food. This instance, together with the previous one, functions as an interface where supply and demand intersect, the experience offered and the experience perceived, at the point of sale, so the actors involved are the mentioned ones as well as those who give specificity according to the involvement of the user/consumer at the point of sale and purchase, and the corresponding experience. Examples include: users and consumers, purchasing communities, opinion communities, Internet search engines, sites, networks and applications of food and gastronomy, influencers, traditional media, consumer defense associations, and so on. • Appropriation. Actors who participate in the experience of cooking and eating, including the food itself, social and personal practices, products that accompany food, sensory and cognitive experiences, the degree of involvement and the way of sharing the experience with other members of the community and the ecosystem. Examples include: food subjects, individuals or groups of people who eat, opinion communities, food and gastronomy applications, influencers, utensils and product suppliers, traditional media, and so on. Now we will look at the different types of actors according to their role in the food ecosystem, beyond the degree of specialization they might have regarding the instances. The actors are all those people, entities, institutions, and/or organizations (public or private, for or not for profit) that operate in the food ecosystem. We classify them by affinities to be able to map them

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more clearly, although some actors may belong to more than one category, and the categories are also sometimes a bit ambiguous, given the nature of classifying such a broad and heterogeneous universe. • Core activity companies. These are companies dedicated to the activities described in the instances or nuclei of specialization. Examples include: companies producing organic apples, companies producing milk, agotourism businesses, supermarkets, restaurants, and so on. • Support services to core activities. These are supplier companies that provide services to the core activity companies. Examples include: financial institutions, consulting, ICT services, media, social networks, logistics, storage, and so on. • Product suppliers of core activities. These are those companies that provide machinery, infrastructure, supplies, and so on. Examples include: agricultural machinery companies, seed companies, commercial equipment companies, packaging companies, and so on. • Educational institutions. These are all entities (public or private) that directly support ecosystem activities in the generation and consequent transfer of knowledge. Examples include: schools and universities, technology agencies, research centers, promotion agencies, information services, and so on. • Public entities. These are all those public services that are part of the local, provincial, and national governments that are directly or indirectly linked to the food ecosystem. Examples include: ministries, secretariats, directorates, municipal, provincial, and national linked to programs that support the activities of the instances of production, transformation and commercialization of the ecosystem, investment and export agencies, and so on. • Nonprofit organizations. These are all those organizations that are part of the food ecosystem pursuing specific purposes. Examples include: NGOs, business chambers, professional associations, guild associations, unions, and so on. • Professionals or independent trades. These are the people who independently carry out activities in and for the food ecosystem. Examples include: veterinarians, agronomists, designers, food engineers, chefs, accountants, lawyers, foreign trade agents, intellectual property, marketing and advertising advisors, quality consultants, influencers, and so on. • Food subjects. These are those people who, individually or in community, participate in different ways in the processes of acquisition and appropriation of food.

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By way of clarification regarding what we mean by “Food Subjects or Personas” as listed above, it is enlightening, as well as surprising, to think of ourselves as food subjects to better understand where we stand by default or decision and therefore where we would like to stand in relation to the food world. Here are a series of terms to begin to understand and reposition ourselves, based on what we consider more empowering situations, toward the most submissive ones, servient to the market and external inertia. They are not all taxative or always desirable, as in the case of self-sustainability, but they paint a more complete picture of the complexity of our subjectivity and vulnerability in certain places, such as when we tend to be in the roles of the most submissive food subjects. • Decision maker. This is the subject in his maximum empowerment, who has his own clear tastes, needs, and choices. He has awareness and contact with the different instances of the food cycle from intuition and common sense, or if dedicated to any of its practices or study of them, he acquires implicit and/or explicit knowledge. • Self-sufficient. This is the subject who has decided or inherited the practice that allows him/her autonomy of the food cycle, being his own provider. Of course, it can be partially or totally, and the degree of collectivity in these tasks can also vary. • Co-producer. This is the subject as proposed by the Slow Food movement, when the food subject takes responsibility for his purchase decisions in relation to the desirable values that arise in Slow Food: good, clean, and fair food. In this sense, the least number of intermediaries between the producer and the buyer, the better. In this manner a complicity is generated, each party interested in the well-being of the other, knowing in this way the good practices of both and of the community are strengthened along with territory to which they belong. • User. This is the subject seen as the final recipient of the food ecosystem, a very common concept in the design, where it is studied, considered, and works for the benefit of, who will effectively interact with the final result (process, program, product, etc.). • Consumer. This is the subject as proposed by the market and has been internalized to the point that many people identify themselves as such, even being aware of the economic interest that underlies this term. It is a complex term since in effect “consume” may refer to “ingest,” but it is under the influence of marketing devices and strategies. • Client. This is the subject is in most direct instance with the seller, being of a temporary or permanent role, depending on given situation and

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context. It is the subject circumscribed to a commercial exchange between buyer and seller, highlighting the quality of the buyer as the central subject, and the distortion that this generates from that same subjectivity. Be it “the customer is always right” as a tyrannical and capricious slogan, to the relentless bombardment of publicity and propaganda that affects us, including ways that we fail to perceive given the sophistication and naturalization of these practices turned culture.

5.4.3 Connections among actors In a productive ecosystem, actors are linked not only in commercial suppliercustomer transactions (vertical selling/purchasing), but also in multiple types of relationships in which goods, knowledge, contacts, experiences, languages, and so on are put into play. In addition, the connections between actors can be within the food ecosystem in question or in connection with other food ecosystems located in other parts of the world. In this way, generation of localglobal networks are created, which are extremely necessary to enhance the effects of innovations. We can classify these links as follows: • Connections between companies. Those in which two or more companies are linked to buy and sell goods and services (e.g., providercustomer), to exchange knowledge, information, and languages (e.g., business chambers), or to transfer practices and experiences (e.g., transfer between large and small companies or between customers and suppliers). These definitions do not exclude possibilities where the commercial exchange has a content of transfer of knowledge, information, and experiences, which is something that happens very often. • Connections between public and nonprofit institutions. For example, between public entities and business chambers, between educational institutions and NGOs, and so on. • Business connections with public and nonprofit institutions. Those in which companies are linked to business chambers, educational institutions, research centers, promotion agencies, and others. • Connections between alimentary personas. These are links that allow the exchange of information, knowledge, experiences, and language, allowing to build an eventual or stable relationship (user community). • Connections between companies and food subjects. These are links to commercial, promotional, or social responsibility objectives, between those companies that directly (in the vast majority of cases) or indirectly maintain connections with users (buyers, consumers, customers, etc.)

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• Connections between institutions and food subjects. These are relationships that exist between educational institutions, NGOs, and business chambers, in which goods are not generally traded, but exchanges, information, knowledge, experiences, and languages are.

5.4.4 Elements that are exchanged As we have already seen, there are actors in the ecosystem that establish different types of connections and links. In addition, we can determine what kind of elements are exchanged in these connections. • Tangible goods. These include raw materials, products, equipment, supplies, and so on. Generally, this type of exchange occurs between customer and supplier and generates an increase in economic value (addition of knowledge and work), and the exchange is carried out using different means of payment. • Services (financial, marketing, legal, accounting, consulting, etc.). This is a type of exchange similar to the previous one, but the good to be exchanged is knowledge that has been “merchandized.” The exchange is done using different means of payment. • Experiences with commercial sense. Later we will see that in addition to raw materials, products, and services, especially in the stages of acquisition and appropriation, that there is what Joseph Pine II and Guilmore call the economy of experience. Companies provide their users and consumers with experiences, scenarios in which products, services, sensory and cognitive triggers, varied interactions, and different ways of combining knowledge with product acquisition are articulated, in a search to generate a memorable sense between the user and the company itself. Examples of this include agritourism routes, restaurants, and other gastronomic venues where interaction with food occurs. The exchange is done using different means of payment. • Information, knowledge, and noncommercial experiences. These are elements that do not have a sense of profit, but that occur in the process of exchange between the different actors in the ecosystem. It occurs tacitly or formally (through publications, papers, conferences, etc.) • Energy (types and use in different instances). An ecosystem, as we have seen, exchanges matter, knowledge, and energy. In the food ecosystem, energy is exchanged between the natural environment and the transformation process, the latter being more or less efficient. Food that must be transported thousands of kilometers to be consumed by a user who can

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acquire it at a nearby farm is demonstrating a significant degree of energy waste that could be remedied with other more efficient commercial systems. • Waste. For every exchange of goods, services, experiences, and energy, waste is produced. In some cases, its impact can be minimized by improving production processes (e.g., organic waste resulting from cultivated plants), transformation (e.g., industrial waste), marketing (e.g., expired food), acquisition (food purchased and then not consumed), and appropriation (food that is served to eat, but that is not consumed and is then thrown away, disposable utensils, packaging that is thrown away, etc.) through technology, regulations, or changes in habits. In others, the generation of complementary processes that allow them to be recycled or reused is required. Waste is not a matter that is exchanged directly between the actors, even though there is an exchange with the natural environment (a component of the food ecosystem that we will see in the following point), and therefore it is part of the exchanges that exist in the food ecosystem. Some of these exchanges may be commercial (e.g., reuse of oil collected in restaurants, waste collection services, etc.) or noncommercial (e.g., community refrigerators, waste for compost, etc.).

5.4.5 Environment The networks that make up the ecosystem do not operate in a vacuum. They exchange with the environment and are permanently influenced and impacted by culture. The environment, both natural and cultural (as well as physical and virtual), condition in various ways the development and type of evolution of the food ecosystem. The natural and cultural environments are articulated in a territory that according to the scale can be considered local or global. We divide the types of environments that constitute the food ecosystem into two categories: 1. Natural (environmental phenomena). These include abiotic elements, such as type of soil, air, water, and weather, and biotic elements, such as animals, plants, fungi, and insects. The food ecosystem takes matter and energy from nature to convert raw materials into processed foods including packaging and accessories. Understanding the type of environment in which the food ecosystem we are analyzing and intervening is developed is very useful to minimize the negative impact on the environment and make the system more efficient.

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2. Cultural (values, customs, traditions, beliefs, cultural and artistic expressions, social cohesion, etc.). We live in a determined culture, in a certain type of market, in a network of values, customs, and traditions, including physical and virtual objects that are expressed in given ways to interrelate and build our artificial world.

5.4.6 Territorial scale Finally, the ecosystem scale defines the limits, often arbitrary, that we establish to analyze and/or intervene in a food ecosystem and propose scenarios where the local (in its different dimensions) articulates with other food ecosystems, either local or global. We define the territory as the geographical space composed jointly by the natural and cultural environment. According to the density of one or the other, we can find rural, urban territories or hybrid variants of both (semirural, peri-urban, etc.) • Personal. The individual and his or her intimate group (family and friends). • Neighborhood. The habitat in which we regularly move in. This can include where we actually live and/or work, study, or participate, and implies our traveling to and from. It is the physical and cultural environment we have actual direct contact with on a daily basis. • Local. The local scale is a relative magnitude. It is not necessarily a municipality or city. We know that ecosystems greatly exceed territorial political boundaries. However, it is useful to propose a local scenario as competitive and complementary to a global one (glocal), where a good portion of the actors share types of goods that they trade, languages, practices, experiences, and knowledge, which provide a certain identity and differentiation from other local or global ecosystems. For example, Peruvian cuisine constitutes an emerging food ecosystem that can be distinguished from other global (industrial food) or local (Indian cuisine) proposals. • Global. The global scale refers to the global exchange space, where there are flows of people (tourism, migration), goods (international trade), money, and so on. The global scale is a space in which the local scale can be articulated without necessarily losing its identity. • Glocal. The glocal scale is the articulation interface of the four previous scales, making it possible to convert the closed into open, the unconnected into connected, thus expanding the opportunities of local production and anticipating the threats that global production can generate on the local scale.

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5.5 Conclusions Given that the natural and cultural environment that constitutes the environment of the food ecosystem is made up of an infinity of variables, most of which we do not control and cannot measure, we must conclude that food ecosystems are complex systems. An ecosystem model is useful for us to map the dynamic articulation between the environment, technologies, and social groups. These are the dynamics that are given not only by the variability of instances, actors, connections, elements of exchange, environment, and scale, but also by the struggle for meaning that, toward the interior and exterior of ecosystems, occurs between social groups that present innovations as neutral against those others that give them a sense, in favor or not, of sustainability. These conflicts of meaning around the vision that each one gives to food, the ways of producing and marketing it, and the experiences of acquisition and appropriation, pose a conflictive scenario between the existing agri-food ecosystem and one in transition toward sustainability. The model that we propose serves to understand the relative weight of each part that makes up one or more food ecosystems and analyzes the changes that have occurred between the basic aspects that compose them and those that could occur in the future. At the same time this model serves as a context analysis tool, for all those who intend to intervene in design projects in complex systems, whether on a micro scale for a new form of food, a change in the experience of eating, a different way for marketing, or on a macro scale for a novel model of dealing with waste or a new approach in food education. Based on all of the above, we propose to consider the term “food ecosystem” instead of “food system,” given the degrees of complexity, instability, and scale, more similar to environmental and cultural ecosystems than to linear and finite processes, and for this reason, better fit for territories struggling to find equilibrium. This change in perspective can help us operate and accompany the transitions that the food landscape requires, with designs and actions that proactively incorporate or stimulate sustainable innovation as a result of detecting and formulating the problems and opportunities that arise from the analysis and consistent responses, far from preestablished models, rigid formats, and neutral conceptions of the world of food.

References Bisang, R., et al. (2005), Albornoz et al. (2004), cited by Korsunsky, L., Erbes, A., Yoguel, G. (2007). Tramas, redes y polı´ticas: Instrumentos de promocio´n y polı´ticas pu´blicas para el

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desarrollo de tramas productivas. In M. Delfini, D. Dubbini, M. Lugones, & I. Nancy Rivero (Eds.), Innovacio´n y empleo en tramas productivas de Argentina, (p. 402). Prometeo Libros. Caracciolo, M. (2013). Los mercados y la construccio´n de tramas de valor en la Economı´a Social y Solidaria (rural y urbana). Programa de Economı´a Solidaria. Documento de la Ca´tedra Economı´a Social y Solidaria. Enfoques Contempora´neos Argentina: IDAES. Universidad de San Martin. Korsunsky, L., Erbes, A., Yoguel, G. (2007) en Delfini M., Dubbini D., Lugones M., Nancy Rivero I. (Ed.), Innovacio´n y empleo en tramas productivas de Argentina, (pp. 401–402). Prometeo Libros. Kosacoff, B. (2017). Ecosistemas Productivos en. https://www.argentina.gob.ar/sites/default/ files/bernardo_kosacoff.pdf. Perry, D. A. (1994). cited by Escobar, J., Ca´rdenas, F., & Bedoya, I. (2017). De los sistemas a los ecosistemas de innovacio´n. Revista Espacios, 38(34), 20. https://www.revistaespacios. com/a17v38n34/17383420.html. Reissig, P. (2014). Bienvenidos al Food Design: un compendio de referencia. Instituto de la Espacialidad Humana, FADU, Universidad de Buenos Aires, ISBN:978-9974-85754-4. Reissig, P., & Lebendiker, A. (2019). Mapas y Modelos para el Food Design: hacia la innovacio´n sustentable. Instituto de la Espacialidad Humana, FADU, Universidad de Buenos Aires, ISBN:978-9974-94-458-9.

CHAPTER SIX

Design and food robots: Changing processes in the restaurant industry Cristina Santinia, Colin Johnsonb, and Alessio Cavicchic a

University San Raffaele, Rome, Italy San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, United States c University of Macerata, Macerata, Italy b

6.1 Introduction The scope and reach of robots in society is growing. According to data released by the International Federation of Robotics, the installation of industrial robots will reach an annual growth of 10% by 2020. Asia is leading the increase in adaptation of robots, but Europe is also playing a crucial role in this development. The automotive industry is the primary sector for robotic installation, and the food industry is in fifth place with 32% growth between 2016 and 2018. There are signs of growth everywhere: “When you stop and look around the food industry, whether it is new restaurants embracing automation or companies changing the way we get our groceries, it is easy to see why the food robotics market is projected to be a $3.1 billion market by 2025”. Jennifer Marston (https://thespoon.tech/heres-thespoons-2019-food-robotics-market-map/). Restaurants use robots for tasks ranging from food preparation to service. The introduction of robots initially attracted customers seeking novelty in their restaurant experience, and through robots, a new concept of food and restaurants may emerge. Robotic implementation opens new questions about cost-saving, operational effectiveness, and ethical issues. With regard to these questions, this chapter examines restaurants that employ robots in food preparation. It explores the role of robots in the development and designing of a “new” service. We begin by providing an overview of robotics in the hospitality business and discussing its implications in terms of customer acceptance, operational effectiveness, and ethical issues. Then, we present supporting case studies. Transdisciplinary Case Studies on Design for Food and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817821-8.00005-9

Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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6.2 Robotics and food The food industry widely employs robots; we can find some of the earliest instances in the 1980s, when robots were used for packaging purposes. Wallin (1997) describes all the steps of robotic industry development. Demand for enhanced productivity has fostered the implementation of robots in industry. Robots can ensure reliance in operations such as picking, placing, palletizing, and packaging (Iqbal, Zeashan, & Azfar, 2017). Today, with the employment of robots in the restaurant industry, we have moved robots from behind the scenes to center stage. Some restaurants have redesigned their production chain and their service, using robots to perform the same operations (picking, placing, packaging, etc.) in view of customers. Bringing robots inside a restaurant and in contact with customers has changed the role of robots in the food service industry as well as their relationship with humans. Initially, robots were isolated from humans, but this is no longer universally the case. Our case studies focus on the role that robots have in reshaping the service and experience provided by restaurants and cafes. We also underline the possibilities of designing new interactions between humans and robots in the restaurant business. As mentioned, the evolution of robotics has reshaped the space for implementation and use of robots. A new dimension of the cultural influence of robots has progressively emerged. Dunstain et al. in Laursen, Pedersen, Merritt, and Caprani (2016) highlight the role that culture has in the diffusion and creation of robots: “in looking at the social acceptance of robots, we present culture as the touchstone for meaningful and sustained human-robot interaction” (p. 4). The ways robot designers incorporate robots into social environments follow social models that are similar to those employed during human-tohuman interaction (Laursen et al., 2016). Scholars have started to use terms such as “social robots” when they refer to robots that interact with humans. In restaurants, we understand that the interaction between customers and robots provides some elements of innovativeness that can foster curiosity among clients. Yet the relationship between robots and chefs (or in general between robots and specialized staff) is another interesting aspect. For example, a chef uses his or her creativity in taking care of the aesthetic of food plating, and robots can help chefs not only in replicating their plating but also in realizing new plating (Laursen et al., 2016). The book by Laursen

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et al. (2016) collects many contributions that explore the role of robots in the food industry, and it shows how people who work in restaurants think about robots; they mainly believe that robots can help them with repetitive and cumbersome tasks. Grimes and Harper (2008) suggest that creativity is the essential ingredient for chefs when it comes to developing new recipes; yet, the idea that being creative means preparing new recipes finds a wide diffusion. The concept of employing robots for designing food or for designing unique customer experiences is not widely accepted. The diffusion of 3D printers has created an interest for the exploration of new forms of food; the number of restaurants that serve 3D printed foods is growing, and some scholars see in 3D food printing a potential solution for overcoming drawbacks of current food customization techniques (Godoi, Prakash, & Bhandari, 2016). Research from applied technology, food engineering, and consumer behavior can provide insights for understanding under what conditions 3D food printing will be most utilized. Nevertheless, research on the impact of robots on the experience of dining out is still in its nascent stage.

6.3 Context Robotics is experiencing progress on many fronts. The development of humanoid robots that can interact with people and the integration of robots into the retail shopping experience are just two areas attracting a great deal of academic interest (Kanda, Shiomi, Miyashita, Ishiguro, & Hagita, 2009). According to Ivanov, Gretzel, Berezina, Sigala, & Webster, 2019, conceptual papers in this field increased after 2015, more specifically when scholars began to explore the implication of robotics in hospitality and tourism. Research has focused on various domains such as technological issues, the interaction between humans and robots, the perspective of the company that introduces robots, the impact on service, and the relationship of robots with the external environment. There is no doubt the issue is multifaceted and complex. There are two broad categories of robots: industrial and service robots (Ivanov, Webster, & Berezina, 2017). Industrial robots are designed for industrial tasks and are employed in production and manufacturing, whereas service robots are conceived for supporting humans (Ivanov et al., 2017). Robots have evolved over the years, and they vary according to the type of application, the service provided, and the degree of social interaction,

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Existence 50 (years) Applications Manufacturing

Social Moderate Mobility Autonomy

interaction

Professional

Personal

20

20

Remote areas, healthcare, deep water repairs, mine clearing Little to none

Human recreation, human companionship

Little to none Some Semiautonomous; Semi to somewhat programming autonomous: teleoperation and programming Hospitality Food preparation Room cleaning, heritage preservation, and telepresence robots at tourism conferences, medical examples tourism Projected Moderate Strong growth

Some Moderate Somewhat autonomous

Concierge robots in hotels and visitors centers, museum guides, airport and destination greeters Very strong

Our adaptation from Murphy et al. (2017, p. 106).

mobility, and autonomy. In the hospitality and tourism industry, robots have found different uses (Murphy, Hofacker, & Gretzel, 2017) (Table 6.1). Restaurants can design the implementation of robots according to their characteristics. The literature provides cases about robotics in food delivery and food processing. Regarding food delivery, robots can perform different tasks from tableside ordering to the implementation of humanoids robots for taking orders (Curtis, 2016). Some robots deliver orders and others are in charge of front-of-house operations (Peterson, 2016). The idea of implementing robotic technology in food preparation in restaurants is increasingly attractive to entrepreneurs. In addition, the development of 3D food technology (Prisco, 2014) could create new scenarios for future innovative ideas in the field. Restaurants in general (for a taxonomy of restaurants, we refer to the one provided by Davis, Lockwood, Alcott, and Pantelidis (2018)) have adopted solutions to improve efficacy and to reduce human bias. The implementation

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Fig. 6.1 The food robotics market. (From The Spoon.)

of Restaurant Management Systems supported by digital technology (Kocaman & Kocaman, 2019) has created a breeding ground for technological improvement and, in our view, for robotic applications. The Spoon, a company that provides “daily reporting and insight into the food tech revolution” (https://thespoon.tech/about-the-spoon/) has released a map that represents the food robotics market (Fig. 6.1). Through a combination of web-based information (and more specifically from the specialized press) and academic literature, we have selected some short cases/examples of restaurants that use robots.

6.3.1 Robots for sushi Big Eyes Sushi is a restaurant in Brooklyn that employs robots for sushi preparation. The robots are manufactured by a company called Suzumo. According to a Brooklyn news website: “There’s still a small staff of humanoids, led by one sushi chef, so the savings in time and cost get passed on to the customer. But the machines aren’t taking over just yet! They cannot cut or prepare the fish, the sushi chef has to do that himself” (http://brooklyn. news12.com/story/39900380/fugghedaboutit-food-big-eye-sushi). The combination of tradition and technology is part of the value proposition of this restaurant. Salat, the founder of Big Eyes Sushi, explains,

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“We’ve always been interested in casual cooking. Rick and I started thinking about how to make sushi more accessible, but keep the quality high. Then Rick came across this technology, and the proverbial light bulbs went off, because it’s technology meets tradition” (from an interview with the founder of the company available at: https://theculturetrip.com/northamerica/usa/new-york/articles/technology-meets-tradition-at-brooklynsbigeye-sushi/). Robots, in this case, are employed to maintain a high-quality service, and they guarantee rapid service and food preparation. However, the role of the chef is still crucial since it is the chef who slices the fish and stirs vinegar into the rice. Automation can help the company save money and keep the price for a single sushi roll at around $7 USD (half the price for a sushi roll in a fancy restaurant in the same neighborhood). “I think that [technology] helps us reach more people. It allows us to do something like this and not charge $60 for sushi,” Salat says. “Otherwise we’d need a whole group of people making rolls, and we wouldn’t be able to create this kind of restaurant.” (https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/new-york/ articles/technology-meets-tradition-at-brooklyns-bigeye-sushi/). The motto of the company is “made fresh, made fast, made well.”

6.3.2 Robots for Bowls Spyce, in Boston, is a restaurant whose motto is “culinary experience elevated by technology.” According to the restaurant’s website, “The machine occupies center stage at Spyce. You can watch as the ingredients fall into one of seven cylindrical woks that are continually rotating against metal induction plates, whose temperature can be varied for your particular dish. Meanwhile, a screen above each wok lights up to describe what it’s making and for which customer. After about two and a half minutes, the wok tips the cooked food into a paper bowl for the garde-mangers to grab. The wok lowers itself to be cleaned by a quick blast of high-pressure water, then rotates upward again for the next meal” (https://medium.com/neodotlife/spyce-robotickitchen-984779cb5930). Four young Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers founded the company. Spyce sells seven different types of bowls for $7.50 USD each, which is about $3 USD cheaper than others in the neighborhood are. “Restaurants are about two things — their food and hospitality,” says another of Spyce’s founders, Kale Rogers. “We’re not so busy cooking.

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We have more time to interact with the customers” (https://medium.com/ neodotlife/spyce-robotic-kitchen-984779cb5930). In an interview, one of the founders of Spyce provides an exciting point of view: “Why do this? Is it really faster or cheaper than using human cooks? If so, will Spyce be a milestone in automation, a big step on the way to eliminating the idiosyncratic artistry (or inconsistency, if you want to see it that way) of human line cooks? Probably not. The most interesting thing about eating in a robotic restaurant is how un-revolutionary it actually feels.”

6.3.3 Robots for Pizza Robots in the pizza-making process have been widely employed at the industrial level. In 2017 in Europe, a Paris-based company named Pazzi was founded to provide total autonomous pizza production services for restaurants with high traffic and a need for quick service (e.g., train stations). Another compelling case in this field is the American company Zume Pizza, founded in 2015, headquartered in Mountain View, California. Clients can order their pizza, which is mainly made by robots, through the Zume app. After placing the order, the robots deliver the pizza to the client’s door. The basic idea of the founders was to make gourmet pizza affordable. A 14-in. pizza sells for between $10 USD and $20 USD depending on ingredients; the price includes delivery. A Domino’s large cheese pizza sells for a minimum of $15.99 USD, and the price increases with additional toppings; delivery costs $3 USD. Tip (which is customary in the United States) is added to the final cost. Zume, however, is a no-tipping business. According to the website, “Hospitality is included in our pricing and we compensate the entire Zume team in an equitable and competitive way” (https://www. businessinsider.com/zume-pizza-robot-expansion-2017-6?IR¼T#a-humanslides-the-pizza-into-zumes-proprietary-self-cleaning-pizza-slicer-whichcrops-the-pie-into-eight-perfectly-proportioned-slices-16). In addition, in 2016 the company went a step further and created vehicles that can cook the pizza en route to deliveries, making the pizza fresher. Zume is attracting investors. The company has also made some choices that are “green,” such as using 100% recyclable and compostable packaging.

6.3.4 Robots for Asian food Some major companies that own Asian restaurants have also invested in robotics.

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One example is HaidiLao Hot Pot, a restaurant chain that employees more than 60,000 people and operates in 100 cities internationally, including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United States, South Korea, Japan, and Australia. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Haidilao is the biggest hotpot restaurant in China by sales (www.bbc. com/news/av/business-46946431/haidilao-robots-staff-china-s-top-hotpotchain). The company is famous for providing some free services while people are waiting for their order (including free nail treatment for women, for example). In 2018, the company, in partnership with Panasonic, opened a robotic restaurant in Beijing. According to an article published in the South China Morning Post, “When I first learnt that Haidilao was going to employ robots and become the world’s first ‘smart hotpot restaurant’, my first reaction was not excitement but worry. As a self-anointed hotpot connoisseur who has patronised the Beijing-based chain’s restaurants 33 times in less than two years, I believe that friendly and meticulous service was what made Haidilao what it is today. Can robots, with their preprogrammed responses, cater to China’s demanding hotpot warriors?” (www.scmp.com/tech/article/2171402/firsthand-review-haidilaos-smart-hotpot-restaurant-beijing). The introduction of robots has helped the company to improve energy savings and to reduce staff size from 170 to between 130 and 140 employees per restaurant. “But it would never be possible for a restaurant to go unstaffed … It is said that dining is a combination of two: before the dish comes to table, it’s logistics; but after that, it’s called service” (from SCMP.com). Robotic technology is also used for noodle preparation. Fuamen Ramen in Nagoya, Japan, introduced robots for preparing noodles in 2009 (https://www.designboom.com/food/ramen-robot-restaurant/). In November 2019, LG Electronic installed a robot in the open kitchen area at CJ Foodville’s Veep restaurant in Deungchon, Seoul, South Korea. This robot can both make and serve noodles (www.zdnet.com/article/lginstalls-noodle-making-robot-in-restaurant/).

6.3.5 Robots for Beverages The range of companies in the beverage business that employ robots includes wine bars, cafes, and companies that serve mixed drinks. In Prague, there is Ciberdog, a wine bar that uses robots to serve wine. The bar opened in 2008, and it is unique in its genre in Prague. In an article published on Reuters, the author says “And never mind George Orwell’s

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sentiment in his essay ‘The Moon Under Water’ that the perfect pub has ‘barmaids’ (who) know most of their customers by name, and take a personal interest in everyone” (Reuters: https://ca.reuters.com/article/ lifestyleMolt/idCAKCN1NX2CR). Cafe X in San Francisco launched in 2017. It appears as a usual cafe “except that the barista is a little less talkative” (Canales, 2018). The station is entirely automated and prices start at $3 USD. In early January 2020, the company announced the closure of three locations in San Francisco, with a decision to focus on airports. “Having learned everything we could from our San Francisco locations, we decided to laser focus on growing Cafe X at airports through partnerships with leading coffee brands, and retailers in addition to Cafe X operated units” (Albrecht, 2020). The decision to close the three locations in San Francisco represents the choice of the company of entering into the vending machine industry. In December 2019, the company was in fact trying to obtain NSF (public health and safe) certification for operating as a vending machine, which would allow the company to operate 24/7.

6.3.6 Robots for Burger Creator restaurant in San Francisco serves fresh burgers at $6 USD. The quality of food is high, and burgers are tasty and made with fresh and local ingredients. Robots create the burgers. One of the founders, Alex Vardakostas, describes the process as follows: “The first step after you place your order is a bun will go into the system, and it’s a whole brioche roll. In other words, [it’s] not the pre-sliced variety that you might be used to. Using a whole roll keeps it fluffy and preservative-free, since it isn’t exposed to air. The brioche roll is sliced, buttered, and toasted. Next, the toppings are sliced fresh. In the middle of the robot is basically a huge refrigerator. It’s a case that contains lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, onions. We have two types of cheese that we grate to order directly on the bun and then 15 different sauces. So the robot will do different things simultaneously. There’s a lot of software tracking to make sure the timing matches up. And so while we’re building the burger with the toppings, like slicing tomatoes, pickles, grating cheese, melting cheese, at the same time, the meat is being ground and placed into the griddle, and then cooked to order” (Avella & Kim, 2018).

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Creator opened in 2018 in the heart of San Francisco. The burger has the quality you would expect from a burger that costs $12 or $18 USD at an upscale restaurant. The combination between humans and robots in the design of the service is intriguing for a visitor. In an interview, one of the founders explained the company’s approach. “Something we got really excited about in 2012 and we’re just starting to execute on is reinventing the job of working in a store like this, where the machine is taking care of the dirty and dangerous work,” co-founder Frehn explains. “We’re playing around with education programs for the staff. Five percent of the time they’re paid just to read. We’re already doing that. There’s a book budget. We’re paying $16 an hour. As opportunities come up to fix the machine, there’s a path we’re going to offer people as repair or maintenance people to get paid even more” (https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/ 21/creator-hamburger-robot/). The business model of Creator is quite simple: “We take a really good burger that people like and sell it for half the price” (https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/21/creator-hamburger-robot/).

6.4 Perception and satisfaction in consumers Background research on consumer satisfaction in the restaurant industry is extensive, and many issues emerge from field studies. Scholars aim to investigate customers’ opinions, perceptions, motivations, and loyalty. In food design, the identification of what adds value to the consumer is pivotal (Massari, 2012). It is challenging to define what makes restaurant dining experience satisfactory for a customer because topics such as quality or satisfaction are extremely difficult to define, quantify, and evaluate (Almanza, Jaffe, & Lin, 1994). Service quality is a component of satisfaction (Zeithaml & Bitner, 2003, p. 85) and therefore a customer’s overall satisfaction depends on several issues, including responsiveness (service quality), food quality/reliability, physical design, and price. In addition, atmosphere (Andaleeb & Conway, 2006) can influence a customer’s pleasure and satisfaction. Price plays a dual role in the perception process of customers. For one, total perception of the price influences the satisfaction of customers (Iglesias & Guillen, 2004). If the restaurant appears to be too expensive, the overall satisfaction of the experience may be negatively affected. For two, price may be an indicator of quality (Lewis & Shoemaker, 1997); therefore, high prices could be associated with high-quality food.

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What is clear is that a satisfied customer becomes a loyal guest. Moreover, a satisfied customer is a vehicle for reaching new customers. In the digital era, with the development of apps that enable customers to rate restaurants, electronic word of mouth has an enormous impact on the restaurant and catering business ( Jeong & Jang, 2011). Robots can be a useful tool for improving the satisfactory experience of customers. They can offer the chance of “trying something new” and make the experience memorable. They can also manage orders and make service quick and efficient while reducing wait times. They can also help improve service quality and increase margins by reducing costs.

6.5 The pursuit of differentiation strategies From a strategic perspective, robots can help companies in achieving a differentiation strategy. Companies that embrace robotics position themselves as innovative. To be automated makes companies distinguishable from the rest of the local competitors. Robots take part in the design of a new product or service. In addition, as it emerges from most of the cases in this chapter, companies try to combine food quality with affordable prices. The companies examined are able to sell meals at lower prices compared to local direct competitors. This is a key issue for those companies that are settled in areas where there are young and low-income customers; it is the typical situation that exists in University campuses, or where in general the cost of living is very high. The idea of combining food quality, price and innovation sounds more successful than focusing solely on innovation. A similar consideration emerges from a comment of a journalist who wrote: “The most interesting thing about eating in a robotic restaurant is how un-revolutionary it actually feels”. In this research there was found a profound reflection about the determinants of customer satisfaction, that should be taken in consideration when planning a strategy; the authors write: “Based on the regression coefficients, the beta value for product quality or reliability is very low. Initially it looks surprising but in a modern and high growing restaurant food industry, it is not as much important tool to differentiate the positioning on basis of quality as it is presumed by customers that all restaurants of almost equal levels are giving same food quality. So, the point of differentiation is not food quality now” (Andaleeb & Conway, 2006).

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A successful differentiation strategy is based on the value that customers perceive. An interesting point of view emerges, and it leads to further questions: can robots be a differentiation tool in the restaurant industry? How may robots aid in value creation?

6.6 Robots and social distancing The emerging challenge of COVID 19 has nurtured the interest in robots. One of the pillars of the fight against the COVID disease was social distancing, that is an effective mean for reducing the risk of virus transmission. In many environments, especially in Hospitals, robots can replace humans where tasks are repetitive and straightforward. This will also help to reduce professionals’ exposure to the virus. Robots have been employed in general, where the level of human interaction is high. The work by Zeng, Chen, & Lew, 2020 describes the employment of robots in different fields, during the COVID lockdown; the authors pinpoint that the Pandemic Event can be the chance for a broad acceptance of robots in various areas, including tourism, recreation and hospitality. After COVID the perception of people was that they were living in a contagious world (Bogue, 2020), and robots help to make people feel safer. If on one side, scholars and people recognize the decisive role that robots have during pandemic events or disasters, on the other, some critics emerge. When the risk of contagious is high, robots are handy and welcome, but there is no doubt that they can replace workers, and in the long run, they can create some problems for the labor market. The scenario depicted by Barrett (2020), although focused on the analysis of the disruption of food supply chain, proposes some reflections about the consequences that robotization in the restaurant and hospitality industry can have on the workforce. There is a fascinating article published in 2015 by Freeman that explore the risk of robotization for workers and provide some possible solutions. The fundamental question is “Consider a world in which we create robots/ machines that are sufficiently good at mimicking our work activities that they could readily replace us and earn what we currently earn. Would this technology make us better off, or worse off?” (p. 5). If we think about the chance that robots have represented for medical doctors in hospitals, we must say that robots contribute to making people’s lives better. Robots can serve the opportunity to add value to the workforce’s tasks: addressing some tasks to robots means adding value to people’s skills and knowledge.

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Freeman (2015) envisions the hypothesis of including workforce in the management of robotics implementation and provides some theoretical solutions for mitigating the impact of robots within organizations. Nevertheless, the advent of COVID and the emerging need for social distance has created new space for robots in society and hospitality and leisure.

6.7 Motivations In studying motivations for the adoption of robot technologies, there are “external” reasons behind the implementation of robotic technologies in the restaurant business (Ivanov, Gretzel, Berezina, Sigala, & Webster, 2019). Robots have been introduced in the restaurant business due to several reasons, including machine-learning advances (machines learn from data, identify patterns and make decisions with minimal human intervention); the development of flexible, reprogrammable robots; AI services provided by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others and the Growth in data analytics (https://restaurant.org/Downloads/PDFs/Research/Restaurant2030.pdf). The vibrant business environment created by robotics has created a breeding ground for the development of small manufacturers and companies that operate in the robotic industry (Mathath & Fernando, 2015) Robots must be designed to respect some basic principles of the food industry (Masey, Gray, Dodd, & Caldwell, 2010; Mathath & Fernando, 2015), such as hygiene, speed, safety, ease of programming. Therefore, companies seek to robotics an answer to reducing costs and improve their efficiency. Robots are often associated with innovative and futuristic practices and to the dilemma of man vs technology. Restaurants are extremely labor intensive: according to the national restaurant association average sales per employee in 2015 was the lowest if compared to other business (grocery stores or auto dealers) and labor productivity remained flat over the last years in the restaurant business (https://restaurant.org/Events/Learning/ Webinars/Mapping-Restaurant-Technology-Landscape). In some areas, restaurants have to face problems with labor shortages: it may be challenging to find skilled people that are available to work in restaurants. A short-term solution for reducing costs in restaurants is to hire unskilled people but this necessitates in investing time in training people. In other places, the cost of living is so expensive that workers cannot afford the rents to live there; in cases such as in San Francisco restaurants experience difficulties in hiring people even if they guarantee a minimum

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wage. Thus, robots are also introduced to answer to a specific customer needs (Ivanov, Gretzel, Berezina, Sigala, & Webster, 2019). Customers in the US are more and more keen to use technology when they go to a restaurant (National restaurant Association: https:// restaurant.org/Events/Learning/Webinars/Mapping-Restaurant-Technol ogy-Landscape): they are likely to use smartphones or tablets for placing orders, or they would like to see drones delivering pizzas. In general, there is a growing interest in technology among consumers. A survey carried out by the National Restaurant Association in the United States reveals that many restaurants would implement technology and robots, but the main barrier remains high costs. Investments concern not only the acquisition of robots, the changes in the process design and marketing, but also maintenance and human resources. As the 2019 report on future trends of the restaurant industry released by the national restaurant association underlines: “Technology skills will be needed to ensure the staff is able to deal with automation and robotics, data analytics and more. Yet even with enhanced use of technology to drive productivity, panelists expect the industry to remain very laborintensive. With demographic trends pointing to continued dips in the number of working teens, panelists predicted an increase in the restaurant industry’s reliance on older workers” (https://restaurant.org/Downloads/ PDFs/Research/Restaurant2030.pdf). On the other side, this scenario creates the conditions for the development of new jobs, such as the food engineer, and the reinforcement of a stable network of technology specialists, chefs and restaurant managers. Fewer researches have been carried on consumer perceptions of robots: the majority has focused on the interaction between robots and humans (Mende, Scott, van Doorn, Grewal, & Shanks, 2019; Murphy et al., 2017); the question about consumer perception of robot restaurants and robotic preparation of food is still unconsidered. More attention to consumers has been paid by scholars that investigate the ultimate frontiers of robots in food preparation, that it is 3D printing food systems. 3D technology can have a primary role in the designing of an offer that combines health and nutritional issues. New scenarios can emerge as outlined by Sun et al. (2015): “Except existing nutritional preferences, individual dietary has highlighted the concept of personalized nutrition in terms of individual’s health status and body-type requirement. Food printing can enable a precise control of people’s diet, and ensure fresh and healthy dishes that exactly meet the needs and preferences

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of individuals. It would significantly improve population wellbeing. In this case, food ingredients even with well-known material properties must be tailored to specific formulations under each fabrication. More efforts are required to bring such highly customized food products into every home” (Sun et al., 2015: 317).

6.8 Conclusion The robotic industry is evolving and, as such, so too will the concept of robot restaurants. The introduction of robots in restaurants will create new job profiles and lead to significant attention being paid to robotic restaurant design. However, given technological advances, products or services that encapsulate technologies that are fast evolving may have short life cycles. In addition to technology, the customer will also evolve. In a 2017 interview in Modern Trader, Ed Rensi from McDonald’s stated, “Restaurants need to evolve with their customers at the same pace that customers evolve. One of the things we did at McDonald’s is we believed in quiet evolution, not revolution. That’s why the company has sustained itself for 70 years, and will continue to do so as long as they maintain that culture. When analysing performance, you can’t look at dollar amounts; you’ve got to look at transaction counts. There’s been a steady decline in transactions at all restaurants on a comparable basis since 2007. And there are more restaurants being built every year. The newer restaurants come out of the box for three years looking really strong, but a whole bunch of other restaurants get closed down.” In other words, for restaurants, robots represent a reliable differentiation tool, but companies must be aware of the sustainability of their competitive advantage. The advent of COVID has reshaped the perception of robots and the impact they have in society. Their implementation in restaurant, cafes, and in the hospitality business in general can help with respect to social distancing. Therefore, the debate on the role of robots and their tasks within food preparation and service is still open; interpersonal communication and relationships are part of the experience in food and beverage consumption. The advent of robots in the restaurant and hospitality industry can feed a debate about the role of skills and competences in the workforce. Thus, robots represent, for some of the cases in this chapter, a reason for founding new ventures. The examples provided underline that high-tech restaurants and cafes represent a pillar for new start-ups.

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Future scenarios are hard to predict. Given the demand for healthy options by consumers, advances in the field may be made following current nutritional and health trends. One of the main problems is the definition of value in robotic restaurants. In this chapter, we explored the complexity of the relationship between food and value. The degree of technology incorporated into robotics complicates the identification of food value. Massari (2012) elicits this issue: “Technology has always changed the relationship between human beings and food in that it has impacted on the value people attribute to food itself.” The author, in the same paper, writes, “in the food field, the arduous task of the designer is that of grasping the food values that people cannot reduce” (p. 7). There has been a proliferation of robotic restaurants and this reduces the sustainability of an innovation-based competitive advantage. Yet, most of the companies discussed in this chapter focus on a business strategy that combines quality with reduced price. The case studies show that the degree of technology incorporated into robotic restaurants is not of primary importance for the definition of food value to consumers. Technology is instrumental to quality, accessibility, freshness, and service. The real question is “which issues inspire the design of food value in robotic restaurants?”

References Albrecht, C. (2020). Cafe X shuts down its three downtown San Francisco locations. The Spoon. Available at: https://thespoon.tech/cafe-x-shuts-down-its-three-downtown-sanfrancisco-locations/ (Accessed 28 June 2020). Almanza, B. A., Jaffe, W., & Lin, L. (1994). Use of the service attribute matrix to measure consumer satisfaction. Hospitality Research Journal, 17(2), 63–75. Andaleeb, S. S., & Conway, C. (2006). Customer satisfaction in the restaurant industry: An examination of the transaction-specific model. Journal of Services Marketing, 20(1), 3–11. Avella, J., & Kim, I. A. (2018). Robots make burgers at this San Francisco start-up backed by Alphabet Inc. Business Insider. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/robot-madeburger-creator-restaurant-san-francisco-2018-8?IR¼T (Accessed 28 June 2020). Barrett, C. B. (2020). Actions now can curb food systems fallout from COVID-19. Nature Food, 1(6), 319–320. Bogue, R. (2020). Robots in a contagious world. Industrial Robot: The International Journal of Robotics Research and Application, 47(5), 673-642. Canales, K. (2018). This futuristic cafe relies on robots to take your order and make your coffee—No human interaction required. Business Insider. Available at: https://www.businessinsider. com/cafe-x-robotic-coffee-bar-automation-2018-6?IR¼T#a-cafe-x-location-lookslike-any-other-coffee-shop-1 (Accessed 28 June 2020). Curtis, S. (2016). Pizza Hut hires ROBOT waiters to take orders and process payments at its fast-food restaurants. Mirror. Retrieved April 2019 from http://www.mirror.co.uk/ tech/pizza-hut-hires-robot-waiters-8045172.

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Davis, B., Lockwood, A., Alcott, P., & Pantelidis, I. S. (2018). Food and beverage management. Routledge. Freeman, R. B. (2015). Who owns the robots rules the world. IZA World of Labor. Godoi, F. C., Prakash, S., & Bhandari, B. R. (2016). 3d printing technologies applied for food design: Status and prospects. Journal of Food Engineering, 179, 44–54. Grimes, A., & Harper, R. (2008). Celebratory technology: New directions for food research in HCI. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 467–476). Iglesias, M. P., & Guillen, M. J. Y. (2004). Perceived quality and price: Their impact on the satisfaction of restaurant customers. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 16(6), 373–379. ISO 690. Iqbal, J. H., Zeashan, H. K., & Azfar, K. (2017). Prospects of robotics in food industry. Food Science and Technology, 37(2), 159–165. Ivanov, S., Gretzel, U., Berezina, K., Sigala, M., & Webster, C. (2019). Progress on robotics in hospitality and tourism: A review of the literature. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, 10(4), 489–521. Ivanov, S. H., Webster, C., & Berezina, K. (2017). Adoption of robots and service automation by tourism and hospitality companies. Revista Turismo & Desenvolvimento, 27(28), 1501–1517. Jeong, E., & Jang, S. S. (2011). Restaurant experiences triggering positive electronic wordof-mouth (eWOM) motivations. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 30(2), 356–366. Kanda, T., Shiomi, M., Miyashita, Z., Ishiguro, H., & Hagita, N. (2009). An affective guide robot in a shopping mall. In Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human robot interaction (pp. 173–180). ACM. Kocaman, E. M., & Kocaman, M. (2019). Restaurant management system (RMS) and digital conversion. IGI Global. Laursen, C.Ø., Pedersen, S., Merritt, T., & Caprani, O. (2016). Robot-supported food experiences. In J. Koh, B. Dunstan, D. Silvera-Tawil, & M. Velonaki (Eds.), Vol. 9549. Cultural robotics. CR 2015. Lecture notes in computer science Springer. Lewis, R. C., & Shoemaker, S. (1997). Price-sensitivity measurement: A tool for the hospitality industry. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 38, 44–47. Masey, R. J. M., Gray, J. O., Dodd, T. J., & Caldwell, D. G. (2010). Guidelines for the design of low-cost robots for the food industry. Industrial Robot: An International Journal, 37(6), 509–517. Massari, S. (2012). Introducing food experience design in the food studies curriculum. In Vol. 7. GLIDE’12 conference proceedings, November (p. 3). Mathath, A., & Fernando, Y. (2015). Robotic transformation and its business applications in food industry. In Robotics, automation, and control in industrial and service settings (pp. 281–305). IGI Global. Mende, M., Scott, M. L., van Doorn, J., Grewal, D., & Shanks, I. (2019). Service robots rising: How humanoid robots influence service experiences and elicit compensatory consumer responses. Journal of Marketing Research, 56(4), 535–556. 022243718822827. Murphy, J., Hofacker, C., & Gretzel, U. (2017). Dawning of the age of robots in hospitality and tourism: Challenges for teaching and research. European Journal of Tourism Research, 15, 104–111. Peterson, H. (2016). this is the first fast food chain in America that requires zero human interaction. Business Insider. Retrieved on April 2019 from http://www.businessinsider. com/eatsa-fully- automated-restaurant-chain-2016-2. Prisco, J. (2014). ‘Foodini’ machine lets you print edible burgers, pizza, chocolate. CNN. Retrieved on April 2019 from http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/06/tech/innovation/ foodini-machine-print-food/.

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Sun, J., Peng, Z., Zhou, W., Fuh, J. Y., Hong, G. S., & Chiu, A. (2015). A review on 3D printing for customized food fabrication. Procedia Manufacturing, 1, 308–319. Wallin, P. J. (1997). Robotics in the food industry: An update. Trends in Food Science & Technology, 8(6), 193–198. Zeithaml, V., & Bitner, M. J. (2003). Services marketing (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Irwin. Zeng, Z., Chen, P. J., & Lew, A. A. (2020). From high-touch to high-tech: COVID-19 drives robotics adoption. Tourism Geographies, 22(3), 724–734.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Designing food experiences: A multisensory approach Hendrik N.J. Schifferstein Department of Human-Centered Design, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

7.1 Introduction To become successful in highly saturated consumer markets, products need to offer more than just good quality and an appealing look. They need to distinguish themselves from their competitors; somehow, they need to be special if they want to attract additional consumer attention. There are several ways in which products can be special, and producers may walk multiple paths simultaneously to support their products. For instance, a product may have an important story to tell because it is produced in a special way and does not burden the local natural environment, or because it is made in a very traditional way that uses authentic and historic utensils. A product may contain local ingredients that provide special health benefits, or a product may be produced using the latest state-of-the-art technology. A product may be special because its consumption is part of a local ritual that has been celebrated for a long time. We provide a different approach that supports food purchase and consumption: we try to create intuitive, interesting, and engaging food experiences by actively involving multiple sensory systems. We also look for ways in which designers can enhance the aesthetic experience of consuming a food product. This requires a broad perspective on product design in which the physical food may function as the centerpiece, but for which several supporting elements may be recruited in shaping the intended consumer experience. These involve considerations of how the food is prepared and presented (e.g., cooking utensils, packaging, spatial arrangement, tableware) and the context in which it is consumed (e.g., on the street, at a particular occasion, in a restaurant). Even though consuming food is a multisensory event by default (Schifferstein, 2006), a food experience goes beyond what happens between biting a product, masticating, and swallowing it. An experience may already Transdisciplinary Case Studies on Design for Food and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817821-8.00015-1

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start when you think about a product, imagine eating it, or start fantasizing about it (Desmet & Hekkert, 2007). First contact may involve smelling the product or seeing it from a distance. This may activate memories about other experiences with similar products. It can give information about whether the food is ripe, and raises expectations about whether it will taste sweet, sour, or bitter. Perhaps you touch the package, which may feel firm, soft, crispy, rigid, or heavy. All these sensations may be linked intuitively with specific product characteristics, and thus may enhance or decrease various aspects. Subsequently, when you open the package your experience is affected by the ease with which you access the food, the tools you use to prepare and cook the product, the way in which the product is presented, the cutlery that you use to consume the food, and aspects of the location where you happen to be, including the number of people, the temperature, the lighting, the softness of your seat, the sounds you hear, and so on (Spence & Piqueras-Fiszman, 2014). Each sensory modality is sensitive to a different type of energy and is stimulated by different product properties. Consequently, the modalities usually provide a multitude of pieces of product information, which may or may not overlap (Schifferstein & Spence, 2008). Consumers tend to prefer products for which different pieces of sensory information duplicate or complement one another (Bell, Holbrook, & Solomon, 1991; Veryzer & Hutchinson, 1998). In these cases, the product communicates a coherent message, making it easier to understand what the product is and how it can be used. The downside of coherence, however, is that for common products this predictability can evoke boredom. A limited degree of conflict between information perceived by the different senses may result in a surprise, which consumers may evaluate as pleasant (Ludden, Schifferstein, & Hekkert, 2008, 2009). However, a discrepancy will only have a beneficial effect if the product remains easily recognizable as a member of a specific category (Hekkert, Snelders, & van Wieringen, 2003). Especially for food products that are ingested, unexpected elements may easily evoke an aversive reaction, because they can directly affect the person’s health (Schifferstein & Michaut, 2002). Hence, sensory discrepancies only have the potential to improve product evaluations when the product is well known, the discrepancies are relatively small, and expected negative health effects are minimal. In contrast, by excluding unexpected elements the designer takes away potential sources of distress and opens up the possibility to enjoy the product more intensely. By explicitly paying attention to all the sensory modalities in the design process, the designer avoids conflicting and

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confusing messages, enriches the product experience, and makes the interaction with the product automatic and more intuitive. An iconic multisensory food design is the “Mary Biscuit” designed by Stefano Giovannoni for Alessi (Fig. 7.1). This biscuit box seems to enhance the coziness of social visits. The majority of biscuit boxes are made from metal; they feel cold and may contain sharp edges, and the sounds they make when they are opened are also sharp. When the cover accidentally falls on the floor, it can make a loud and unpleasant noise. Hence, through the senses of touch and audition, many biscuit tins communicate hostility and coldness rather than friendship and warmth. The “Mary Biscuit” container, however, is different in that it is made out of plastic and has only rounded edges, and its shape resembles that of a pillow. The box feels soft and warm to the touch; it makes only soft noises when you open it or put it down, and the box itself seems to invite the user to cuddle it. In contrast to the metal box, which usually does not have a distinctive smell, the lid of the “Mary Biscuit” is impregnated with a vanilla-like odor that becomes apparent when the container is opened. Because many cookies contain the flavor of vanilla anyway, the additional smell may enhance the experience of tasting a cookie. In addition, the smell might evoke nostalgic memories of family visits to one’s grandmother and thereby may enhance the feeling of sharing an experience with intimate friends or relatives. Upon closer inspection, the “Mary Biscuit” container uses multiple senses to communicate connected, but to

Fig. 7.1 The “Mary Biscuit” designed by Stefano Giovannoni. (Credit: Courtesy Alessi spa.)

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some extent also redundant, pieces of information to produce a pleasing, multisensory impression. A sensory approach to design requires the development of multiple designer capabilities, such as the development of sensory sensitivity, sensory communication abilities, and material expertise (Schifferstein & Desmet, 2008). In a multisensory project, designers need to make sure that all pieces of sensory information together sculpt a coherent whole. Hence, sensory food designers need to obtain expertise for each sensory modality (vision, touch, taste, smell, audition) separately and in conjunction. In order to train such abilities, designers need to engage with objects, explore materials attentively, and share and discuss their nuanced experiences with others. Although scientists and practitioners have developed systems that help to classify, describe, analyze, and assess sensory experiences (Schifferstein & Desmet, 2008), it is only through the development of personal sensory sensitivity and expertise that designers can fully employ the possibilities of sensory exploration as a tool in the design process. In some cases, the results of sensory perception research can provide general insights on how consumers are likely to experience particular product attributes, but only careful personal explorations can give designers information at the detailed level needed for incorporation in their design ideas. Hence, Multi-Sensory Design (MSD) also involves an appeal to the designer to let their personal sensory experiences guide the design process. The sensory awareness of materials that artisans acquire by using hand tools to shape a material intuitively helps to produce coherent end products; working with natural materials in a real-life context automatically produces a feeling of whether different product elements match or not. Therefore, traditional crafting skills and sensory exploration of different materials are invaluable ingredients for creating coherent designs (Chamberlain & Roddis, 2003; Sennett, 2008).

7.2 The multi-sensory design (MSD) approach The main challenge in MSD projects is to come up with an integrated, holistic vision on the experience designers would like to evoke among potential end users. Perceptual knowledge and the corresponding cognitive associations obtained through explorations in all sensory modalities are explicitly incorporated in the design process. Based on these explorations in separate sensory modalities, an integrated sensory concept is formed by evaluating and selecting the sensory elements that together contribute to

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Fig. 7.2 Framework for the Multi-Sensory Design approach. (Credit: Reproduced with permission from Schifferstein, 2011; Copyright ACM, 2011.)

a holistic expression. These insights are then used to select materials, to design the product properties, and to develop the working principles of the target product (Fig. 7.2). The ultimate design challenge is to develop a product that provides users with an interesting, rich experience and is nevertheless perceived as a coherent whole. Based on the insights obtained during multiple student projects, we developed a design approach in eight steps that supports the process (Schifferstein, 2011; Sonneveld, Ludden, & Schifferstein, 2008). In the sections that follow, we illustrate each stage of the process by referring to the outcomes obtained during the graduation project of Daniel Hagmeijer, performed at the Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven under supervision of Peggy Nachtigall and Jettie Hoonhout for his master’s degree in Design for Interaction at Delft University of Technology under supervision of Rick Schifferstein and Walter Aprile (Hagmeijer, 2010). The goal of his project was to create a user-friendly kitchen product in which the experience of “homemade cooking” was enhanced, both in the product functionality and in the way the senses were stimulated during usage.

7.2.1 Selecting the target expression Food producers may want to evoke specific experiences among their target user groups, and consumer research may serve as input for the product development process. If you know which kind effect you would like to achieve among your target users, you may intuitively derive the interaction qualities that are needed when people interact with your design, and this also partly defines the qualities of the object that you design (Hekkert & van Dijk,

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2011). MSD takes the desired expression of the object (e.g., eagerness, cheerfulness, innocence, arrogance) as the starting point for the design process (Sonneveld et al., 2008). In a business context, the target expression may be provided by the marketing department based on consumer research. This research should be aimed at uncovering latent needs that are not yet met by current offerings on the market. Research methods that can be used at this stage are mostly qualitative, as they aim to obtain insights into processes that consumers are only partly aware of. Methods include making collages, filling in creative booklets, focus group discussions, and in-depth interviews. In addition, the analysis of big data sets on consumption patterns or consumer search behavior may reveal patterns that people are unaware of or are unwilling to report. The main goal of our example project was to find out what “homemade cooking” means to consumers, and how this meaning can be made experiential, by transforming these characteristics into product functionality and properties that stimulate the sensory modalities of vision, touch, audition, and smell. The design student performed a qualitative study to obtain insight into the meaning of “homemade cooking.” He gave six people a booklet with questions and tasks to be completed at home. In addition, participants joined a generative group session, during which they made a collage on the role of cooking in their lives and performed a sensory exploration of “homemade cooking.”

7.2.2 Conceptual exploration After the target expression has been selected, you need to develop an understanding of this expression. You may start by writing down all the associations that come to mind when thinking about this expression. Making a collage can support this process. What does the expression make you think of? Participants in the example project reported that they like to be in control during cooking. Cooking should be done in a clean and structured environment. Kitchen tools should be easy to use. Cooks feel that homemade meals are healthier than what large companies provide. Also, meals may need to be customized to the dietary needs of individual household members. Dinner is also a social event where family members get together. Cooking tends to differ between weekdays when it is mainly seen as an obligation, and weekend days, when it is also a time to relax and experiment, because people have more time and may invite friends or family for dinner. The cook who puts effort in preparing a meal would like to get appreciation from his or her family members (Fig. 7.3).

Fig. 7.3 Associations for the concept of “homemade”. (Credit: Reproduced with permission from Hagmeijer, 2010.)

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7.2.3 Sensory exploration Subsequently, you collect samples that seem to evoke the target expression (Fig. 7.1) for different sensory modalities (e.g., pictures, materials, fragrances, fabrics, computer sounds, foods, plants). How does the target expression feel, sound, smell, and look? While exploring the world, you may become curious about the sensory properties of objects, especially the ones people hardly ever seem to notice. In what ways can you pick up or manipulate an object? What sounds can it produce? How does it feel when you touch it in different ways? What does it smell like? Try to go beyond obvious choices; objects that look tough may feel quite elegant! Please try to use different types of movements to explore objects and close your eyes during the explorations, as visual input may distract you. Participants indicated that “homemade cooking” tends to look a bit messy; Ingredients are still clearly distinguishable in a dish and they are chopped in uneven sizes. Thus, the perfect homemade dish displays imperfection. Sounds that are associated with “homemade” include the sounds of rain falling on a tent, which is associated with the cozy atmosphere inside a house; the rumbling of someone opening a wooden door, which is associated with craftsmanship; and the sizzling of a frying pan. Tactile sensations that feel homemade include the feel of a rough surface with an organic shape, the embossment on a flattened egg carton, and a piece of textile with texture variation that feels like someone has embroidered it or finished the edges by hand. Homemade should typically smell like the fresh food ingredients. In some cases, readymade dishes seem to acquire an artificial or sour smell that reveals that they are not homemade.

7.2.4 Sensory analysis In the next step, you try to bring all information from the sensory explorations together in a single overview. You try to describe and understand the relationships between the perceived sensory properties and product expression. Try to find out why certain material samples seem related to a specific expression and try to determine the physical properties that evoke the target expression (Fig. 7.4). In this stage, reading about systematic research on how people perceive and describe their sensory perception qualities can help to structure your personal observations and to facilitate communication among all stakeholders involved in the project.

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Fig. 7.4 Bringing together the sensory insights in a single map covering four sensory modalities. (Credit: Reproduced with permission from Hagmeijer, 2010.)

7.2.5 Mind map The results of the previous stages serve as the starting point for a mind map. This map organizes the information that was acquired while trying to maintain the richness of the data. The target expression is displayed in the center of the map, where several outward branches connect it to the main concepts defining the core of the expression. On their turn, these main concepts may be linked to other concepts, which may be linked to other concepts or sensory dimensions. From the center of the map to the periphery, the descriptors in the map become less conceptual, more concrete, and more sensory. New concepts may be added if links seem to be missing or if a set of concepts can be summarized under a new label. In the end, the mind map should indicate how a particular concept may be translated into perceivable product aspects that make the concept physically tangible. If the final design involves a branded product, brand associations can be added to the mind map to clarify how the design can contribute to the brand image. You may decide to

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modify or disregard some parts of the map in the design process if these conflict with the brand image (Nikolaidou, 2011). The mind map is an essential step in the MSD approach because it creates an overview of all the information that was gathered in the previous steps. One of the important understandings that can be derived from the mind map is that a target expression may be achieved in multiple ways that can be mutually exclusive. In the “homemade cooking” project, we can distinguish between three branches that all support the design vision, either focusing on cooking together, enhancing the Dutch character, or emphasizing traditional values. Each of these topics branches out, following multiple steps resulting in characteristics that are perceptible through the senses. In this case, it is not so hard to bring all insights together and let the three branches collectively contribute and support an all-encompassing design (Fig. 7.5).

However, this is not necessarily the case in other projects. For instance, an expression like “elegance” may be related to flowing, uninterrupted movements, but also to simple and straightforward solutions. Similarly, “natural” may evoke associations with green, firm, and treelike structures but also with blue, flowing waves. Integrating these different manifestations in a single design is unlikely to yield a unitary, coherent impression. Hence, in these cases, a materialization will depend on the choices that are made at this stage. To support and integrate the various steps transforming an experiential design vision into a materialization with a concrete set of sensory characteristics that support this vision, Camere, Schifferstein, and Bordegoni (2018) recently developed the Experience Map. This tool expands on the mind map by explicitly considering multiple conceptual levels in a single overview, and by using both words and images to represent them.

7.2.6 User-interaction scenario By developing an interaction scenario, the time dimension is included in the design process. The scenario describes the actions users perform, the feedback they receive from the product, the instructions users receive, and so on. A scenario is usually set within a certain context, defining a typical user and an environment in which the interaction takes place. In the MSD approach, scenarios are used to identify all the sensory touch points during the encounter. Which senses are stimulated when you pick up the product, when you store it, when you unwrap it, when you use it, or when you dispose of it? What does this contribute to the overall expression?

Fig. 7.5 Design vision, connected to a mind map with three topics that branch out into sensory stimuli that make the vision experiential and tangible. (Credit: Reproduced with permission from Hagmeijer, 2010.)

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7.2.7 Model making Staying in touch with the physical counterparts of a specific product expression is a safeguard that enables you to develop an integrated user-product interaction that makes sense to prospective users and engages them. Actually, sensing a specific property often differs from one’s expectations when trying to imagine it. In an MSD process, visual sketching and digital modeling should be left to a minimum, otherwise visual impressions and cognitive reasoning will tend to dominate design choices. You should try to “sketch” in all your senses, in order to assess the sensory aspects of your concepts. You can make collages and explorative, physical models for the different senses, and assess their appropriateness in the proposed user context.

7.2.8 Multisensory presentation The final design needs to be presented in a multisensory way, if you want to communicate all the benefits of an MSD; a set of slides will not suffice. If final prototypes are not yet available, you can show drawings, you can let the audience feel foam models, you can let them feel and smell materials, and you can play sound files. A storyboard can show the involvement of the various senses in the different stages of human–product interaction. In our example project, the search for a “homemade cooking” experience resulted in a two-person tabletop cooking device that can steam, grill, and broil food (Fig. 7.6). Each user has their own personal steamer and can place it on top of the cup in the center of the grill plate that can be filled with a low viscosity liquid like water, broth, or wine. The steamer has small holes in the bottom to allow the steam to pass

Fig. 7.6 Concept of a two-person tabletop cooking device that can steam, grill, and broil food and induces a “homemade cooking” experience among its users. (Credit: Reproduced with permission from Hagmeijer, 2010.)

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through. Grilling is done by putting food on a grill plate with raised ridges. For broiling, the food is placed under this plate, where the heat radiates from under the grill plate. The cooking device stimulates the human senses and communicates “homemade cooking” in the following ways:

• Vision: The overall product aesthetics show curves and earthy colors. The shape

• • •

of the grill plate is kept as simple as possible while retaining some curvature. The steamers show resemblance to old-fashioned cooking pots. The curvature of these pots occurs throughout the design. Touch: Silicone surfaces are used for all elements the user touches during usage. This material feels soft and flexible and will only become slightly warm when the product is in use. Audition: The sounds are dampened using a soft, rubber-like material in the lids of the steamers and some parts at the bottom of the product. This material also stabilizes the tabletop and prevents it from shifting. Olfaction: The cooking smell will be the dominant smell during usage. We decided not to design any specific smell for the cooking device itself.

After creating experiential prototypes, potential end users may be asked to evaluate the proposed concepts to evaluate whether the product indeed is successful in fulfilling its primary functions and evokes the target experience. Quantitative research methods may be used to evaluate all the ins and outs of the concepts, so you can fine-tune the final design. This type of research should go beyond simple liking judgments to more specific aspects on the sensory perception characteristics (e.g., how rough, sticky, or soft the product is), the cognitive associations it evokes (e.g., whether the product is modern, natural, or authentic), and the emotional associations it evokes (e.g., if it is surprising, relaxing, or exciting). Typically, such judgments are obtained using questionnaires that ask participants to rate a number of adjectives on structured category scales or line scales (Schifferstein, 2009). This type of feedback can help to determine whether all the specified design goals are met and can provide the food designer with input on the effects of their manipulations on consumer impact.

7.3 Conclusion Consuming food products typically comprises a multisensory experience by definition, as this activity involves all the human sensory modalities. However, some elements of this experience may usually go unnoticed as

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they originate from the less obvious modalities. A multisensory approach to design may reveal the importance of such intricate sources of stimulation. For instance, in the auditory domain think of the snap of the KIT KAT candy bar (www.nestle.com/brands/allbrands/kit-kat), the distinctive crack of chocolate breaking as one bites into a Magnum ice cream (www.unilever. com/brands/food-and-drink/magnum.html), the sound of the release of carbonation as a Schweppes bottle is opened (www.schweppes.eu), or the characteristic pop of the Grolsch swing-top cap beer bottle (www. royalgrolsch.com/content/history), all of which contribute to the consumption experience. Such auditory inputs may be derived either from the food itself or from the packaging and tableware that support its consumption and all contribute to the brand experiences. In similar ways, consumption environments might create additional sensory touchpoints. When consumers buy fresh foods at a marketplace, they can use their senses to explore texture and smell, they can assess whether fruits are already ripe, and sometimes they can sample and try foods. There is no need for design to enhance the experience, as the foods and the environment can speak for themselves. In supermarkets, however, consumers are more restricted because fresh products may be wrapped in boxes or foil. Moreover, for many processed foods information is even confined to a name, a description, a brand logo, and possibly a picture on a sealed package (Schifferstein, Fenko, Desmet, Labbe, & Martin, 2013). Hence, design can help companies communicate and support the intrinsic value of their food products among the vast number of competing products available in supermarkets. The MSD approach encourages packaging designers to explore different opportunities, for instance, among materials and the associated treatments they may enable or require. Packaging materials may feel warm or cold, heavy or light, smooth or rough, flexible or sturdy. They may look shiny or matte, transparent or opaque, flimsy or robust, and they may carry a smell or not. These qualities can all serve to communicate the properties of a food product, to support the brand proposition, and to enrich the cooking and eating experience (e.g., Nikolaidou, 2011). As we show in our example project, the MSD approach can also be used to create durable products that support food preparation, consumption, and disposal. In this case, the approach supports the creation of durables that people can operate intuitively and that provide interesting and engaging user experiences. These products are likely to have a clear, distinct identity that distinguishes them from any competitors on the market (Lindstrom, 2005). Companies can use these sensory characteristics as unique selling points in

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their promotional campaigns. In addition, the products’ rich sensory profiles will be difficult for competitors to imitate. By providing rich, satisfying experiences, users are likely to cherish these products, and continue to use them for a long period of time. In conclusion, because MSD has the potential to improve people’s connection to food products during the purchase, make their cooking experience more intuitive and enjoyable, enrich their eating experience, and extend the usage time of durable kitchen tools, we hope that more designers will use this approach in their design practice.

Acknowledgments The Multi-Sensory Design approach was developed in cooperation with Geke Ludden, € Marieke Sonneveld, Elif Ozcan, and several other colleagues at Delft University of Technology from 2003 until 2010. The author is indebted to Daniel Hageman and the Philips Research Laboratories for their permission to use the materials of this graduation project throughout the paper.

References Bell, S. S., Holbrook, M. B., & Solomon, M. R. (1991). Combining esthetic and social value to explain preferences for product styles with the incorporation of personality and ensemble effects. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 6, 243–274. Camere, S., Schifferstein, H. N. J., & Bordegoni, M. (2018). From abstract to tangible: Supporting the materialization of experiential visions with the experience map. International Journal of Design, 12(2), 51–73. Chamberlain, P., & Roddis, J. (2003). Making sense: A case study of a collaborative designled new product development for the sensorily impaired. The Design Journal, 6, 40–51. Desmet, P. M. A., & Hekkert, P. (2007). Framework of product experience. International Journal of Design, 1(1), 57–66. Hagmeijer, D. (2010). Communicating “homemade cooking” in a new kitchen product. MSc thesis Delft: Delft University of Technology. Hekkert, P., Snelders, D., & van Wieringen, P. C. W. (2003). ’Most advanced, yet acceptable’: Typicality and novelty as joint predictors of aesthetic preference in industrial design. British Journal of Psychology, 94, 111–124. Hekkert, P., & van Dijk, M. B. (2011). Vision in design: A guidebook for innovators. Amsterdam: BIS. Lindstrom, M. (2005). Brand sense: Build powerful brands through touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. New York: Free Press. Ludden, G. D. S., Schifferstein, H. N. J., & Hekkert, P. (2008). Surprise as a design strategy. Design Issues, 24(2), 28–38. Ludden, G. D. S., Schifferstein, H. N. J., & Hekkert, P. (2009). Visual-tactual incongruities in products as sources of surprise. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 27, 61–87. Nikolaidou, I. (2011). Communicating naturalness through packaging design. In P. M. A. Desmet, & H. N. J. Schifferstein (Eds.), From floating wheelchairs to mobile car parks (pp. 74–79). The Hague: Eleven International. Schifferstein, H. N. J. (2006). The relative importance of sensory modalities in product usage: A study of self-reports. Acta Psychologica, 121, 41–64. Schifferstein, H. N. J. (2009). The drinking experience: Cup or content? Food Quality and Preference, 20, 268–276.

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Schifferstein, H. N. J. (2011). Multi sensory design. In J. B. Martens, & P. Markopoulos (Eds.), Desire ’11 (pp. 361–362). New York: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 2079216.2079270. Schifferstein, H. N. J., & Desmet, P. M. A. (2008). Tools facilitating multisensory product design. The Design Journal, 11(2), 137–158. Schifferstein, H. N. J., Fenko, A., Desmet, P. M. A., Labbe, D., & Martin, N. (2013). Influence of package design on the dynamics of multisensory and emotional food experience. Food Quality and Preference, 27, 18–25. Schifferstein, H. N. J., & Michaut, A. M. K. (2002). Effects of appropriate and inappropriate odors on product evaluations. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 95, 1199–1214. Schifferstein, H. N. J., & Spence, C. (2008). Multisensory product experience. In H. N. J. Schifferstein, & P. Hekkert (Eds.), Product experience (pp. 133–161). Elsevier. Sennett, R. (2008). The craftsman. London: Penguin. Sonneveld, M. H., Ludden, G. D. S., & Schifferstein, H. N. J. (2008). Multi Sensory Design in Education. In P. M. A. Desmet, S. A. Tzvetanova, P. P. M. Hekkert, & L. Justice (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th design and emotion conference (pp. 1–11). Hong Kong: Hong Kong Polytechnic University. 6–9 October. Spence, C., & Piqueras-Fiszman, B. (2014). The perfect meal: The multisensory science of food and dining. Chichester, UK: Wiley. Veryzer, R. W., & Hutchinson, J. W. (1998). The influence of unity and prototypicality on aesthetic responses to new product designs. Journal of Consumer Research, 24, 374–394.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Enriching the food experience: A design journey through innovative technologies for creating, experimenting, consuming, socializing, and playing with food Patrizia Marti and Annamaria Recupero Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences, University of Siena, Siena, Italy

8.1 Introduction When we were invited to write a chapter on food and technology for this book, we thought that the enterprise would have deserved an entire book. Digital technologies are pervading the dining table, the kitchen, and any digital or physical space where we can grow, create, share, enjoy, consume, learn about, recycle, store, and distribute food. This chapter is by necessity a personal journey on the theme, which touches upon how digital technologies feature the food experience in diverse faces and directions combining emerging approaches. To help reflecting on the food experience enabled by digital technologies, we draw a fil rouge around the way digital technologies are likely to change our experience of food. Our fil rouge unravels around five themes that represent stopovers along a narrative and experience-centered journey focused on creating, experimenting, consuming, socializing, and playing with food. Our review does not claim to be exhaustive or complete. Rather, it aims at devising some “food for thought” and stimulating a sensitivity toward potential evolutions and transformations induced by digital technologies in the food realm.

Transdisciplinary Case Studies on Design for Food and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817821-8.00009-6

Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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8.2 Creating 3D printed food from pixels and digital models What if supermarkets of the future are able to offer digital sketches of food recipes that customers can download and recreate at home using a 3D food printer (Khot, Lupton, Dolejsˇova´, & Mueller, 2017)? Would it be an alternative to selling prepared food products? To reflect on possible answers, our journey starts with exploring the use of 3D food printers to create, design, and assemble food. These machines are mostly deposition printers that sediment layers of raw edible material in a process known as additive manufacturing. A different category of 3D printers named powder binding printers use an alternative technique that solidifies edible powder binders. In both cases, the desired food must be premodeled using computer-aided design (CAD) software. Once done, the digital model is exported to a printing software that instructs the 3D printer on what to do. The concept is not entirely new. In 2008 Phillips Design launched a project called “the future of food,” which envisioned a handy 3D printing device filled with cartridges that could formulate any kind of flavor and consistency of edible goodness. The concept critically imagined a future food in the form of 3D printed gelatin cubes filled with flavor. Would it be an acceptable or desirable future? From that vision, the technology exploration came to a more deepened consciousness of its potential, arriving at defining various usages of 3D printed food. These include to contribute to food sustainability, to sustain personalized nutrition, to improve nutritional value of meals, to produce sophisticated and seducing forms and flavors for everyday foodstuff, to fight hunger in regions of the world that lack access to fresh, affordable ingredients, and to reduce food waste by using materials that would otherwise not be eaten such as algae and insects. Recently, various designers faced the challenges of 3D food printing. The critical design project Edible Growth by Chloe Rutzerveld is an attempt to use 3D printing for creating meals from healthy and sustainable ingredients. It is conceived as an edible ecosystem that can flourish under certain conditions (Chloe Rutzerveld, 2020). The system is an edible micro-breeding of the size of a chocolate, containing seeds, spores, and yeast, which is 3D printed from personalized digital architectures. Within a few days, the seeds generate plants and the fungi mature while the yeast

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ferments, thus solidifying the breeding. The scent and taste intensify along the solidification process, which results in a shape change of the structure. The consumer can decide when to harvest and enjoy this extremely nutrient and fresh food. This project shows how food printing can creatively alter the shape, texture, and flavor of food in unique ways, but it also raises the question whether these changes necessarily correspond to a palatable or attractivelooking and socio-culturally acceptable food (Khot et al., 2017). Consumer acceptability of printed food is still an open issue; the uncertain composition of 3D printed food causes suspicion due to the usual association of 3D printing technology with inedible material (Turner & Lupton, 2017). While 3D food printing raises concerns about its acceptability, chefs and food designers welcome its use to create innovative and tailored kitchenware. The chef Dinara Kasko designed extremely sophisticated silicon molds for pastry that can be purchased together with several recipes combining original ingredients, stylish shapes, and unique textures (Dinara Kasko, 2020). Korean researchers use 3D printing to produce custom tools for creating mandu, the Korean dumpling, into various geometric shapes quickly without any special skills (Lee, Hong, Surh, & Saakes, 2017). Usually mandu require a complicated cooking process. The designers Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello printed a series of potterware including the innovative Utah Tea Set made out of actual tea (Warriner & Sweetapple, 2017). They also designed Potterware 2.0, an app for 3D printing ceramics that eases the need to learn 3D modeling software, thus allowing anyone to design sculptural or functional pottery. At our laboratory Santa Chiara Fab Lab (Santa Chiara Fab Lab, 2020), University of Siena, we use 3D printing technology to design personalized and sustainable kitchenware from biodegradable hemp filaments. The cup in Fig. 8.1 is made of biocompatible and compostable material to replace plastic disposable cups.

8.3 Experimenting with food Digital technologies offer unique opportunities for experimenting with food with the objective of studying how human perception works in the presence of cross-modal stimulations.

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Fig. 8.1 3D printed cup. (Credit: Patrizia Marti, University of Siena.)

It is commonly thought that the senses of taste and smell are the only human senses that play a role in experiencing the flavor of food. The experimental psychologist Charles Spence, professor at the University of Oxford, demonstrated that it is possible to modify the flavor of food by exciting people’s sense of hearing and vision. What we hear helps us identify the textural properties of what we eat, and sound plays a crucial role in determining how much we like the experience; crispness and pleasantness are highly correlated in our rating of foods. Building on this argument, Nishizawa, Jiang, and Okajima (2016) developed an augmented reality (AR) system that modifies the appearance of food and/or plate in real time. They investigated whether the taste of a sponge cake can be modified by changing the food’s color. The results showed that the sweetness of the sponge cake increases with increasing the chroma. The project MetaCookie + experiments with a “pseudo-gustatory” display elicited by visual and olfactory AR (Narumi, 2016; Narumi, Ban, Kajinami, Tanikawa, & Hirose, 2012; Narumi, Nishizaka, Kajinami,

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Tanikawa, & Hirose, 2011). MetaCookie+ is an AR device that produces taste illusions by overlaying visual and olfactory information onto a real food product. In the experiment, participants evaluated differently the taste of a same plain cookie when its appearance and smell were virtually altered. The research demonstrated that the sense of taste changes according to the visual and olfactory information, without any alterations to the chemical food ingredients. This opens the imagination to future scenarios, where the aesthetic appearance of healthy food can be modified to make the food experience more pleasant. This is the case of jellyfish, which are emerging as a potential future sustainable food given depleting sea resources and the lack of sustainable seafood options. Chef Jozef Youssef (Youssef, Keller, & Spence, 2019) showed how the multisensory cross-modal experience can be used to introduce diners to jellyfish dishes. Served at Kitchen Theory’s Gastrophysics Chef’s Table, the jellyfish dish is placed on a table where a projection is mapped with an underwater scene accompanied by a soundscape tailored to the projected scene and delivered to diners wearing headphones. The chef reported that the response from diners to this unusual food experience has been uniformly positive. Takuji Narumi’s MetaCookie + project utilizes a combination of powerful scents and virtual reality (VR) technology to “change” the taste and size of a normal cookie (Narumi, 2016). A VR headset is embedded with plastic tubes connected to tiny capsules inside the headset (Fig. 8.2). The capsules pump a variety of scents through the tubes while a person eats a standard cookie. An AR overlay tracks the physical cookie and replaces it with other cookie images of various sizes. Injecting scents of strawberry or vanilla tricks the sense of taste and subconsciously convinces the brain that the standard cookie currently being eaten actually contains those flavors. When we tried the system, we were persuaded to eat a chocolate cookie that was actually a plain cookie. Even if at present the device practicality is limited, some use-case scenarios can be envisaged, such as using the size-altering functionality to assist in portion control in cases of anorexia to persuade the individual to eat more by digitally shrinking the size of the food. The technology could also help enhance the flavor of otherwise bland food from hospitals. The use of this technology can result in an experience that can replicate a collection of flavors or portions without actually changing the food.

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Fig. 8.2 The “virtual cookie” prototype by Takuji Narumi. (Credit: Patrizia Marti, University of Siena.)

The Digital Taste Synthesizer (Ranasinghe, Cheok, Nakatsu, & Do, 2013; Ranasinghe, Nakatsu, Nii, & Gopalakrishnakone, 2012) experiments with a different technology for tricking our gustatory experience. The system stimulates taste by simulating sour, salty, bitter, minty, spicy, and sweet sensations using electrical and thermal stimulation of the tongue without any additional chemical substances. The solution is quite original, but the practicality and safety are questionable. Researchers at the University of Sussex’s SCHI Lab directed by Professor Marianna Obrist prototyped a visionary and intriguing concept of contactless food delivery system that levitates food morsels straight into the mouth. The system called TastyFloats (Vi et al., 2017) uses two arrays of ultrasonic transducers that emit a wave that allows small amounts of liquids and solids to levitate. As the phase changes, the nodes move between the arrays together with the morsels (Figs. 8.3 and 8.4). To see the system in use, visit https://youtu.be/JpL9n3TLCjc (TastyFloats, 2020).

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Fig. 8.3 TastyFloats. (Credit: Patrizia Marti, University of Siena.)

This type of food delivery has a practical hygienic advantage of bringing food into the mouth without using cutlery. However, playfulness is definitely a key aspect of the user experience. We tried out the system combining a sequence of levitating food items so that they could be transported into the mouth in a predefined order. The effect was amazing.

8.4 Consuming Environmentally friendly packaging that can both reduce food waste and maintain the freshness of goods longer is a hot topic for both research and business. Solutions range from protecting food during transport and storage, using responsibly sourced and recyclable materials, to optimizing the design limiting raw material use in favor of thinner, lighter, and stronger materials, increasing shelf life to minimize food waste, and improving the production and filling process to minimize CO2 emissions and energy use (Robertson, 2005).

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Fig. 8.4 Experiencing the TastyFloats. (Credit: Patrizia Marti, University of Siena.)

Intelligent or smart packaging provides the customer with information on the conditions of food (e.g., temperature, pH), based on the ability to detect, sense, and record changes in the product environment (Biji, Ravishankar, Mohan, & Gopal, 2015). This way, the intelligent packaging facilitates decision making to extend shelf life, enhance safety, and warn about potential health problems caused by the ingestion of spoiled food (Yam, Takhistov, & Miltz, 2005). AR can be used to provide information about ingredients and nutritional value, warning labels, and cooking instructions to overcome the limitation of traditional packaging, which provides customers with a limited amount of information within the space of the labels. For instance, AR can be integrated in the food packaging to tell a story about the brand and engage the customers. The wine company 19 Crime developed the Living Labels (19 Crimes, 2020) with this purpose. Avocado is a new app concept from Apple that integrates AR and artificial intelligence to enable smartphones to scan and identify nutrition data of meals

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using the phone’s camera. This app measures the nutritional value of food and keeps track of that information to provide an overview of eating habits. Other uses of AR include showing what happens behind the scenes (e.g., food production chain) and offering recipes and ideas for cooking. Digital technologies can be also used in the design and manufacturing of ecologically friendly packaging made from antimicrobial polymers. For example, chitosan is made from shells of shrimp and other crustaceans. It can be treated to create films, coatings, and small containers that can be reused as a natural seed treatment and plant growth enhancer. Such materials can be creatively transformed by additive and subtractive digital fabrication processes to produce ecologically friendly packaging with increased shelf life and a smart reuse.

8.5 Playing “Don’t play with your food” is a sentence often heard around the dinner table, even when the material properties of the food invite play and exploration (Bogost, 2016). This sentence is motivated by the conception of food as a primary good, a valued resource not to be wasted. However, play is a vehicle to understand what surrounds us and who we are, and to learn ways of engaging with other people, environments, and objects. Therefore, why not play with food? Imagine eating a carrot that makes sounds with each bite. The idea sounds weird, but it draws our attention to the effects of sound, which are usually overlooked, on the eating and drinking experience. Although some people seem to believe that sound is the least important sense when it comes to experiencing food and drinks (Spence, 2017), our perception of taste is greatly affected by sound. For instance, we appreciate the freshness of sparking water by the sound of the sparkling bubbles. In order to explore food sounds playfully, a group of Australian researchers (Nishizawa et al., 2016) proposed the “gustosonic experience,” which augments food consumption with sound. The prototypes called “The singing carrot” and "iScream!" generate unique digital sounds whenever a person chews a carrot or tastes an icescream cone respectively. Thanks to capacitive sensing able to detect eating actions, the associated sound is designed to enrich the gustatory experience (Wang, Li, Jarvis, Khot, & Mueller, 2018, 2019). Since different people have different eating preferences, the generated sound is also personalized

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and unique. This way, the act of eating offers novel ways of engaging with food, which encourage a positive and exploratory attitude toward food, ultimately counteracting fast/junk food consumption. “You Better Eat to Survive!” is a virtual reality game that involves eating real food to “survive” and eventually escape from a virtual island (Arnold, 2017; Arnold, Khot, & Mueller, 2018). The act of eating is detected through the sound of mastication picked up by a microphone. The gustatory experience is not just a game input, but also an integral element to progress in the game. The objective of the game is to explore an intriguing mixed real/virtual interaction technique to enrich VR experiences while offering a means to stimulate social interactions around food. LOLLio (Fig. 8.5A–C), an interactive lollipop used as a haptic input device that dynamically changes its taste, also exploits the potential of taste as a game interaction modality (Murer, Aslan, & Tscheligi, 2013). The game experience is quite articulated since the lollipop can be manipulated in different ways to discover hidden information, and the taste used as a reward or punishment according to the game’s rules. Since we do not have first-hand experience of the system, we can only postulate that the game has the effect of stimulating the appreciation of different flavors and provides a multisensorial immersion in the game. The examples just described show that the multisensory affordances of food can open the door to experimenting with new opportunities for game design. As such, why not cultivate a playful attitude toward food in adulthood as well?

8.6 Socializing at mealtime Food-related practices like producing, purchasing, preparing, and eating food are a significant part of our cultural identity. Eating is a social activity with many different forms of ceremony, rituals, or informal events that bring people together and constitute universal occasions for community members not only to engage in eating but also to forge and maintain relationships (Beardsworth & Keil, 2002; Danesi, 2012; Fox, 2003; Ochs & Shohet, 2006; Sobal & Nelson, 2003). As stated, one can wonder if digital technology is an acceptable add-on to food consumption in general and in social activities in particular.

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Fig. 8.5 (A) Basic interaction concept, (B) prototype internals, (C) prototype with enclosure and attached lollipop. (Reproduced with permission from Murer, M., Aslan, I., & Tscheligi, M. (2013). LOLLio: Exploring taste as playful modality. In: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on tangible, embedded and embodied interaction (p. 299).)

Mobile phones, laptops, and eReaders are generally unwelcome during commensal meals since they divert attention away from the meal, whereas they are a largely accepted accompaniments when we eat alone (Hupfeld & Rodden, 2012). Notably, James Lull (2014) points out that technologies for shared use like television and radio can trigger discussions among parents and children to reinforce family values. Norms and sanctions within the family seem to be focused on the individual use of personal devices that might disrupt the social aspects of mealtimes, creating isolation and tension among family members (Ferdous, Ploderer, Davis, Vetere, & O’hara, 2016).

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Some design projects use digital technologies to address conviviality around food consumption by stimulating storytelling and reminiscing. Examples are TableTalk (Ferdous, Ploderer, Davis, Vetere, O’Hara, et al., 2016; Ferdous, Ploderer, Davis, Vetere, & O’Hara, 2015) and CoDine, both of which allow synchronous dining among diners (Wei et al., 2011). TableTalk connects different mobile devices to create a communal shared display on the table to stimulate conversation, reminiscence and socializing during mealtime. CoDine is a dining ambient that connects people from remote locations to share the mealtime as an engaging interactive experience. Terrenghi, Hilliges, & Butz (2007) use the term “computer supported collaborative cooking” to denote computer technologies that support and promote collaborative methods of cooking and cooking instructions based on shared experiences. For example, the Living Cookbook enables shared cooking by leveraging intimacy, communication, education, fun, and creativity among the community members. The subtle threshold between an acceptable social use of technology in food consumption and the risk of pervading the food experience and losing the true essence of eating together is easily exceeded. In recent years, the trend of sharing food images through social media as a way to connect and frame social relations breaks down the barrier between our private and public lives (Ibrahim, 2015). The term “food porn” is used to describe this phenomenon, highlighting that the act of styling and capturing food images elicits an invitation to gaze and vicariously consume food for purposes beyond food consumption. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram include dedicated channels and groups where large amounts of content about food are produced and shared within the online community. How can such a huge amount of data about food be exploited beyond the immediate and ephemeral sharing of images? A new area of research on food is emerging that exploits big data to analyze patterns of behaviors and preferences about food-related practices. Rich, Haddadi, and Hospedales (2016) analyzed people’s interests and incentives when sharing food images with the aim to understand the perception of food that is visually appealing and the associated caloric values. Mejova, Haddadi, Noulas, and Weber (2015) presented a large-scale analysis of Instagram pictures taken at 164,753 restaurants by millions of users. The relevance of this research relies on the correlation between food images, obesity rates, and the implicit approval based on likes and comments

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received. The research showed an alarming overwhelming approval of addictive foods high in sugar and fat. Big data about food can also help derive predictive models. Fried, Surdeanu, Kobourov, Hingle, and Bell (2014) collected a corpus of more than three million food-related posts from Twitter and demonstrated that many population characteristics can be directly predicted, like the rates of obesity and diabetes. By analyzing the predictive power of the dataset, the authors provide insight into the connections between the language of food, geographic locale, and community characteristics.

8.7 Concluding remarks Several scholars, researchers, and professionals are committed to defining not only the present but also the future of digital food technologies. For example, Obrist, Tu, Yao, and Velasco (2019) developed three design concepts that integrate and tackle the functional, sensorial, emotional, social, and environmental/atmospheric aspects of “eating experiences in space.” Two international workshops recently took place in Italy and Japan to address pressing questions on the intersection between technology and food. The workshop “The Future of Computing and Food” took place in Castiglione della Pescaia, Italy (Obrist et al., 2018). Twenty-five individuals, including an expert chef, data scientists, and researchers with different backgrounds, were invited to explore the future across computing and food. The format of the event comprised two keynotes, a series of inspirational lightning talks, breakout group sessions, plenary discussions, a tasting event with local food producers, and multisensory experimentations with new technology developments including TastyFloats and MetaCookie+. A manifesto was released after the event to enable a healthy debate and an inclusive futurism. The manifesto gives voice to fears and hopes on the future of food and turns them into a list of 10 concrete actions: (1) Educate people about the impact of “what they eat” on their own health and wellbeing. (2) Promote the sense of communal participation and its importance to food. (3) Optimize food equality by reducing food waste and increasing access to nutritious food.

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(4) Help people in recognizing the basic sensory, hedonic, and social functions of foods. (5) Provide just-in-time feedback on purchase, storage, and consumption of food. (6) Foster the relevance of personal, social, and cultural experiences related to food. (7) Enable data-driven (real-time, large scale) informed food policy decision making. (8) Avoid one-size-fits-all solutions that undermine personal freedom of choice. (9) Ensure total transparency on the origin and heritage of food. (10) Celebrate each actor in the food system (farmer to chef) to create a sustainable system. Another workshop on the future of food and technology followed in 2019 in Kyoto, Japan, to build and follow up on the “Future of Computing & Food Manifesto” released after the previous workshop. In particular, this workshop specifically aimed to take a step further addressing questions on the intersection between technology and food, especially from the viewpoint of adopting AR/VR technologies to eating experiences. An active and creative community is developing after these workshops to raise knowledge and awareness about the future of technology and food. Designing interactive systems around food requires caution and close examination of the possible uses and misuses of technology. Educating people is the most imperative and urgent action the manifesto calls for, which implies training them about opportunities and risks and stimulating sensitivity and critical thinking, which are often overlooked in the daily practice of choosing, cooking, and consuming food. Transparency around food and equality to food access are actions that go hand in hand to act responsibly and guarantee optimal production and distribution of food. Finally, technology has to support basic functions that foods have in human societies, including the need for inter-personal and inter-cultural understanding through food. In this framework, experience and interaction design play a quintessential role in providing a human-centered approach to the design of future technologies to co-create innovative scenarios around the future of food and eating, balancing functional and experiential factors.

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CHAPTER NINE

Organic wine as an Instagram star using a design thinking approach Chalupová Martina, Pila
r Ladislav, and Rojík Stanislav Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

9.1 Introduction Organic wine is becoming increasingly popular with wine lovers, even though organic winemaking requires a sophisticated understanding of complex environmental and chemical processes in the vineyard and winery ( Jones & Grandjean, 2017). In the European Union, wine must be made with organic grapes and yeast to qualify as organic, with restrictions that include a prohibition on the use of sorbic acid and desulphurization. In addition, depending on the residual sugar content, the level of sulfites in organic wines must be less than that of their conventional equivalents (European Commission, 2012). Consumers typically report their motivations for buying organic wine to be personal health and taste as well as environmental issues that challenge their lifestyle choices (Christ & Burritt, 2013; RojasMendez, Le Nestour, & Rod, 2015; Sch€aufele & Hamm, 2018). Wine is a complex, intimidating, and multifaceted product, and wine producers must consider how to make their product stand out, successfully enter various markets, and deal with consumers (Santini & Cavicchi, 2018) potentially using the Design Thinking (DT) approach. Olsen (2015) presented specific aspects that capture the core of DT: consumer empathy, visualization and prototyping, and collaboration. To be able to develop appropriate solutions, practitioners need to understand their consumers—their thinking, opinions, and feelings (Brown, 2008)—according to the DT approach, they need to care about their lives (Beckman & Barry, 2007). As Lockwood (2010) or Liedtka (2015) pointed out, DT engages a broad range of stakeholders from various backgrounds where consumer insight can be viewed as a starting point for the development process. Massive social media use by consumers has forced various businesses to investigate, use, and strategically adapt their various forms to gain insights Transdisciplinary Case Studies on Design for Food and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817821-8.00011-4

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and inspirations to obtain the desired marketing results (Felix, Rauschnabel, & Hinsch, 2017). With an estimated global social media penetration rate of 45% (Statista, 2019a), one of the key questions is how to harness the power of social media. Marketing practitioners, as well as academics, agree that social media could represent a critical tool for customer relationship management, connecting with customers, encouraging business-consumer interactions, and enhancing brand loyalty (Laverie, Humprey, Velikova, Dodd, & Wilcox, 2011; Peters, Chen, Kaplan, Ognibeni, & Pauwels, 2013). In the consumer product sector, many businesses have launched social media campaigns with variable results; many have struggled to adopt social media, as they do not fully follow their use and purpose (Kim & Kim, 2018). Wine producers should be extremely cautious in their use of social media, as their brands can be the subject of global online conversations. As Szolnoki, Dolan, Forbes, Thach, and Goodman (2018) point out, this could be partly due to the high number of low-range and/or unknown wine brands, whereby consumers are eager to generate both positive and negative comments, which can have a significant effect on a brand’s image. In recent years, many wine producers have integrated social media into their marketing communication plans; these have led to the significant transformation of their business models and have changed their marketing dynamics (Forbes, Goodman, & Dolan, 2015; Galati, Crescimanno, Tinervia, & Fagnani, 2017). Thach, Lease, and Barton (2016), who focused their research on the US market, have suggested that marketing professionals in wineries should adopt at least some social media into their communication mix, as their study suggested that it positively impacts wine sales. The present study focused on Instagram, a social network that enables users to share pictures, videos, and stories and is available as an IOS app and online. As of July 2019, the social network reported that it had more than 1 billion monthly active users worldwide and 500 million daily active users. Based on the audience size, the leading market for Instagram is the United States, with more than 120 million active Instagram users (Statista, 2019b). To understand the opinions and experiences of Instagram users, we analyzed data associated with Instagram posts that included a hashtag associated with organic wine. Hashtag use reflects experiences that social media users consider essential and wish to share with their network (Pila
r, Balcarova´, & Rojı´k, 2016). The chapter sheds light on the Instagram communities and their shared values, using the DT approach, which could be useful for wine producers and retailers in the development of marketing activities and the management of customer relationships. Narrative and visual transportation has been widely

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used in DT, as means for studying consumers’ insights (Brown, 2008). A narrative via Instagram storytelling (profile owner’s choice of hashtags) may help marketers understand consumers’ psychological mechanism (Lim & Childs, 2020).

9.2 Organic wine market and the consumers’ perceptions Interest in modern organic wine has been growing since the 1970s in the United States and Western Europe (Bernabeu, Brugarolas, Martı´nezCarrasco, & Dı´az, 2008). For decades, challenges such as the additional costs of organic farming and the necessary certification, the gaps in the understanding of environmental and chemical processes, and the lower prices at which the labeled produce tended to sell have made it difficult for conventional winemakers to enter the organic industry ( Jones & Grandjean, 2017). Another challenge was the negative reputation of the first organic wines (Rojas-Mendez et al., 2015); consumers judged organic wine to be “good for the environment, but not for those who drink it” (Castellini, Mauracher, Procidano, & Sacchi, 2014, p. 4). Several factors have helped the organic wine market to emerge, including rising concerns about environmental issues, consumers’ awareness of these, and their “green attitude” (Alle`s et al., 2017) as well as the establishment of organic certification systems that communicate the value proposition to consumers (Delmas & Lessem, 2017). In Scandinavia and cosmopolitan cities worldwide, organic wine is gradually moving from being niche to being mainstream ( Jones & Grandjean, 2017). In one of its latest reports, the wine and spirits consultancy, IWSR (De La Hamaide & Pascale, 2018), estimated that global sales of organic still wine will reach 1 billion bottles by 2022, which is nearly three times the 349 million bottles sold in 2012. The growth from 2017 to 2022 will be driven by the United States (14%), followed by South Africa and Norway (13.5%), for example, in France, the market share of organic wine is predicted to reach 7.7% by 2022. Consumers’ motivation to purchase organic food generally falls into two main categories, altruistic and egoistic. Altruistic motivations include the environment and ecological issues, animal welfare and rights, and support of rural and local development. Egoistic motivations include views that organic food is healthier, tastier, safer, or has more nutritional value (Rojas-Mendez et al., 2015); Vega-Zamora, Parras-Rosa, MurgadoArmenteros, & Torres-Ruiz, 2013). Still, the organic label does not

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automatically signal that a product has superior qualities to conventional, nonorganic products; rather, it is a guarantee that a specific process has been carried out (Bougherara & Combris, 2009). Wiedmann, Hennigs, Behrens, and Klarmann (2014), who studied the so-called halo or blurring effect on the German market, concluded that organic labeling (its image) has a significant positive impact on the sensory perception of and consumers’ attitudes toward a product. In their experiment, the authors found that respondents ascribed a significantly better taste to the organic wines than conventional wines, and their willingness to recommend the organic wine and pay a premium price was significantly greater. Fotopoulos, Krystallis, and Ness (2003), who focused on the Greek organic wine market, suggested that the primary motivational benefits of wine purchases are quality, information, attractiveness, and good health. Using data from the Swiss market, Mann, Ferjanni, and Reissig (2012) argued that wine marketers should emphasize image and health. The authors suggested that the most important target group is urban female consumers, for whom “organic” was a more important attribute than the color of the wine, although price and country of origin played a more critical role. Bonn, Cronin, and Cho (2015) offered a different perspective, as they focused on the possible effect of organic wine suppliers’ sustainable environmental practices on consumers’ behavioral intentions in the US market. Their study suggests that, above all, consumers valued environment, health, and price characteristics, and that trust in wine retailers’ practices may have a positive effect. Wine is a highly complex product, and practitioners and researchers need to have a deep understanding of the key drivers of consumer wine perception and consumption behavior (Santini & Cavicchi, 2018). Purchase and consumption of wine involve several dimensions of customer perceived value perceptions. Wiedmann, Hennigs, and Siebels (2009) proposed four latent value dimensions of wine that drive purchase attitude and behavior: financial, functional, individual, and social. Demographic variables such as sex and storage, as well as situational determinants and consumer characteristics such as experience, needs, and product involvement, might affect consumer wine purchasing. Furthermore, in general, wineries need to competently produce, bottle, and package wine, deal with logistics effectively, and be consistent when preparing customer experiences in tasting rooms, wine clubs, and events.

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9.3 The context of social media. Focus on Instagram Social media have revolutionized marketing communication practices by their unique features, unprecedented scale, and massive popularity (Hanna, Rohm, & Crittenden, 2011). Social media takes many forms, and the main ones include blogs, forums, business networks, photo-sharing platforms, social gaming, microblogs, chat apps, and social networks. They allow users from different backgrounds to create relationships, which results in a cohesive social structure that generates significant amounts of data and offers users an exceptional service value proposition (Dolan, Conduit, Fahy, & Goodman, 2017; Kapoor et al., 2018). Social media users are becoming more active by creating communication content and by engaging in twoway communication (Malthouse, Haenlien, Skiera, Wege, & Zhang, 2013). Preferably, for wine marketers, the content created by users should encourage engagement, discussion, and conversation (Felix et al., 2017). As of July 2019, the global social media penetration rate reached 45% of the world’s population; North America and East Asia both had an extremely high penetration rate of 70%, followed by Northern Europe at 67% (Statista, 2019a). The most popular social network according to the number of active accounts is Facebook. This was the first network to surpass 1 billion registered accounts and currently reports almost 2.38 billion monthly active users. This is followed by YouTube (2 billion monthly active users) and WhatsApp (1.6 billion monthly active users) (Statista, 2019b). To use social networks and take advantage of their potential for research, it is essential to be aware of their structure. Social network analysis represents a process during which social structures are examined via network use and graph theories (Otte & Rousseau, 2002). As the spreading of online opinions, evaluations, recommendations, and other forms of self-expression have grown exponentially, interest in this area of research, such as opinion mining, has followed (Zhang, Baghirov, Hashim, & Murphy, 2016). Companies perceive the process as an effective tool for reputation management and marketing communication, but they should understand the principles of the businessconsumer interactions, and identify relevant content and user activities (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Wine marketers can have a meaningful influence on present or prospective customers by managing brand experiences and social media exposure, and offering interactions. To achieve effective

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marketing communication, wine marketers should recognize the relevance of the reference group as well as consider the number and timing of interactions and the relevance of the message (Laverie et al., 2011). The effort put into social media marketing could result in a strong brand community. Galati et al. (2017) studied the effects of Facebook and argued that building an active brand community could be more effective than any campaign. Instagram is another possible tool that wine marketing professionals should consider to build a brand community. This social networking app (which is also available online) allows users to share photos, videos, and stories, which results in a visual feed that encourages interactions with other users (Pila
r et al., 2018). It is the sixth-ranked social network in the world (Statista, 2019b). Instagram is highly popular among teenagers (Zhang et al., 2016); 15% of its global active users are women aged between 18 and 24 years, and more than 50% of the global Instagram population are 34 years or younger (Statista, 2019c). Some researchers have characterized Instagram users as narcissistic (Pila
r et al., 2016). Indeed, Buffardi and Campbell (2008) reported that narcissists enjoy the tightly controlled environments with artificial relationships that social media provide, thereby allowing them to manage self-presentation. According to Zhang et al. (2016), the popular trend on Instagram is to use hashtags and to post attractive photos that have a connection to food. Keller (2009) defined six brand building blocks. One of the major parts is formed by feelings (brand salience, performance, imagery, judgments, feelings, and resonance). Both rational and emotional strategies are needed to create a connection between a brand and a consumer. Deeper understanding of emotions and their role should contribute to the areas of creative problem solving and DT (Kolko, 2015), as empathy represents a key characteristic of the DT process (Elsbach & Stigliani, 2017). Cavazza, Graziani, and Guidetti (2020) think that social media analysis may contribute to the understanding of the socio-psychological functions of the consumers. Their research showed that sharing one’s own experiences with food on social networks may have a valuable informational role for observers.

9.4 Methods and data Primary data was collected using Netlytic, which is a program that analyzes contributions on the Instagram social network (Gruzd, 2016). To record communication, we used a script that indexes posts on the global Instagram network into a database (Pila
r et al., 2018). The indexing took

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place between April 4, 2015 and November 6, 2018. The script detected 6240 messages from 4650 unique users, and geodata was available from 55% of the users. To “avoid including irrelevant data,” so-called stopwords were taken away by means of a stopword list (Balucha, 2011). Stopwords are expressions that do not contain any real significance, such as the words “the” and “from,” which are too general to contain any useful semantic information (Li, Zhang, Li, Ouyang, & Cai, 2018). This reduction gave rise to a dataset consisting of 375,984 words. User anonymization was implemented, whereby names were converted into unique IDs, and frequency values were assigned to individual keywords and hashtags (Pila
r et al., 2018). Sentiment analysis is a method used to process natural language that enables personal opinions about a product or topic to be monitored (Liu, 2012; Vinodhini & Chandrasekaran, 2012). This analysis was based on the analysis of adjectives, which enabled classification of messages into one (or more) of the following categories: (1) Appearance, (2) Condition, (3) Negative Feelings, (4) Positive Feelings, (5) Shape, (6) Size, (7) Sound, (8) Time, (9) Taste, (10) Touch, and (11) Quantity (Pila
r et al., 2018).

9.5 Results Table 9.1 shows the 45 most frequently used hashtags by the 4650 unique Instagram users related to #organicwine. The most frequently used hashtags were #organicwine (1st), #wine (2nd), #winelover (3rd), and #naturalwine (4th). Variants of this hashtag and their position in the 70 most frequently used hashtags included #organic (6th), #vinnaturel (10th), #biodynamicwine (14th), #bio (16th), #vinnature (17th), #vinbio (21st), #vinbio (23rd), #vinonaturale (34th), #realwine (50th), #biowine (52nd), #vinobiologico (55th), and #vininaturali (61st). These results indicate that Instagram users considered the terms “natural” and “bio” to be associated with organic wine. Adopting a “green attitude” to influence consumers’ purchasing behavior and presenting wine products that have eco-friendly characteristics have become powerful marketing tools for organic wine (Castellini et al., 2014). Our research also suggests that consumers did not see the difference between organic and natural wine, even though these are two different beverages. As shown in Fig. 9.1 and Table 9.1, the greatest frequency of hashtags related to organic wine came from the United States (New York, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco area), parts of Australia, and Europe (London, Paris, South of France, and North and Central Italy). English

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Table 9.1 Top hashtags in Instagram posts in the area of organic wine. 1–15 16–30 31–45 Hashtag

Fr.

Hashtag

Fr.

Hashtag

Fr.

#organicwine #wine #winelover #naturalwine #winetasting #organic #instawine #vino #winetime #vinnaturel #winestagram #vin #winelovers #biodynamicwine #redwine

6240 2743 1712 1588 1375 1283 1098 998 791 757 750 745 731 676 656

#bio #vinnature #italianwine #winery #winelife #vinbio #wineoclock #veganwine #biodynamic #vinvivant #sommelier #wineporn #winebar #vegan #whitewine

536 481 466 453 445 433 431 431 425 423 406 392 361 344 341

#wein #vinonaturale #winemaker #cleancraftedwine #rawwine #scoutandcellar #winegeek #realwine #vinho #biowine #vineyard #frenchwine #vinobiologico #italy #wineshop

328 321 297 296 294 290 282 278 256 255 251 243 238 228 216

Fig. 9.1 Areas with the most posted organic wine hashtags. (Source: Own adjustment from Netlytic geolocation.)

language was most commonly used, followed by French (with #vin and related terms such as #vinbio or #vinvivant) in second place, and Italian in third place (#vino, #vinonaturale, and hashtags connected with #Italy). Spanish (#vino) German (#wein), and Portuguese (#vinho) were also represented, but were less common.

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The sentiment analysis revealed that hashtags fell under three main categories: Feeling, Appearance, and Taste (Table 9.2). The greatest number, with 1282 (20%) hashtags, were posted in the category Feeling (Good). This indicates that, as expected, emotions played the main role in Instagram communication. In the Appearance category, there were 760 hashtags (12.18% of the original posts that included the hashtag #organicwine). There were 548 (8.78% of the original #organicwine posts) in the Taste category. The categories Size and Quantity had the least number of posted hashtags; these categories appeared to be unimportant to the Instagram users who post about organic wine. In the Feeling category, the most posted hashtags were #Great (563 hashtags, which was 43.92% of the hashtags in this category). This was followed by #Good (483 hashtags, 37.68%), and Happy and Perfect (392 and 392; 30.58% and 23.40%, respectively). Other hashtags included #Lovely (157 hashtags), #Healthy (150 hashtags), and #Fine (149 hashtags), each of which comprised around 12% of the published hashtags in the Feeling category. Mann et al. (2012), who studied the Swiss organic wine market, reported that consumers who perceive organic wine as being healthy are relatively likely to consume it. Our results suggest that there was no association between organic wine and perceived health benefits. In the category Taste (Table 9.3), is the main published hashtag #Delicious (412, resp. 75%), followed by #Fresh (305 published hashtags, representing 55% of hashtags published in this category). As is evident from Table 9.2, only 8.8% of the examined Instagram users used hashtags that fell into the Taste category. However, positive posts (associations) regarding the taste of organic wine may be a good signal, as f.e. Castellini et al. (2014), Jones and Grandjean (2017), and Rojas-Mendez et al. (2015) described how organic wines struggled to overcome a bad reputation regarding taste.

Table 9.2 Main categories that analyzed hashtags fell under.

Feeling (Good) Appearance Taste Size Quantity

1282 760 548 365 258

20.54% 12.18% 8.78% 4.85% 4.13%

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158 Table 9.3 Categories and characteristics. Feeling (Good) Fr. Rel. fr. Appearance Fr.

Rel. fr.

Taste

Fr.

Rel. fr.

Great Good Happy Perfect Lovely Healthy Fine

46.84% 45.66% 26.32% 20.79% 19.87% 13.16% 10.53%

Delicious Fresh Sweet Yummy Tasty Juicy Spicy

412 305 118 91 72 70 55

75.18% 55.66% 21.53% 16.61% 13.14% 12.77% 10.04%

563 483 392 300 157 150 149

43.92% 37.68% 30.58% 23.40% 12.25% 11.70% 11.62%

Beautiful Clean Long Sparkling Light Exciting Bright

356 347 200 158 151 100 80

9.6 Discussion and conclusion DT is characterized as a human-centered approach to problemsolving, creativity, and innovation (Gonera & Pabst, 2019; Kolko, 2015). The importance of the social aspects in DT has logically turned our attention to social media analysis. A number of studies regarding customer experiences and opinions gathered information using questionnaire surveys (Mann et al., 2012; Vega-Zamora et al., 2013; Wiedmann, Behrens, Hennigs, & Klarmann, 2016). By contrast, this analysis focuses on hashtag usage to understand the opinions and experiences of social network users. Choice of hashtags is strongly connected to experiences that social media users find valuable and are willing to share via their networks. Hashtags analysis presents an opportunity to understand groups of users and their shared values (Pila
r et al., 2018). Analyzing contributions on the Instagram posts that included the hashtag #organicwine showed that users linked their experience with hashtags such as #winelover, #naturalwine, or #instawine. The data allowed us to identify the 45 most common hashtags connected to organic wine. On Instagram, every hashtag has its own “gallery,” which users can browse to see photos they are interested in. The more hashtags marketers use, the more galleries their posts appear in. A maximum of 30 hashtags is allowed per post; marketers should aim to use a mix of popular hashtags, preferably in English language, or combine languages (English and Italian, English and French, or English and Spanish). The sentiment analysis revealed that the posts were the most connected with “feelings” (20.5%), which represents the predominant content of the analyzed Instagram posts. The most common expressions of feeling were “great,” “good,” and “happy.” However, “healthy” was mentioned

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relatively little. This contradicts with Pila
r et al.’s (2018) findings, who found that “healthy” was the predominant feeling connected to organic food on Instagram. Furthermore, Mann et al. (2012), Wiedmann et al. (2014), Yadav and Pathak (2016), and Bryla (2015) also recommended that organic wine marketers emphasize the health aspect. However, our results indicate that Instagram users do not find this characteristic important enough to tag in the context of organic wine. An interesting category in the present study was Taste. Even though only 8.8% of the examined Instagram posts used hashtags that fell into the Taste category, they most often associated organic wine with characteristics such as “delicious” and “fresh.” As Castellini et al. (2014), Jones and Grandjean (2017), and Rojas-Mendez et al. (2015) reported, organic wines initially struggled with a negative reputation regarding taste, which was difficult to overcome. Our results may be viewed as a positive signal that the taste of organic wines is no longer “problematic”; however, to check this assumption, it would be necessary to carry out research with an experimental design to investigate consumer perception of organic wine among Generation Z, as they are the Instagram generation. As recommended by Thach et al. (2016), wine marketing practitioners should use multiple platforms, focus on consumer feedback, and be active in their discussions. Instagram, however, seems like a perfect match for organic wine marketers; 15% of its global active users are young women and more than half of the global Instagram community belong to Generation Z (Statista, 2019c). According to Mann et al. (2012), urban and female consumers are most likely to consume organic wine. Our geolocation map (Fig. 9.1) supports this claim; Instagram posts from users that provided their geodata (55%) showed that most posts originated from global cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Paris, London, Rome, and Milan. We are aware that this chapter focuses on quite an isolated issue, in that it only presents ways to make communication more effective using findings from Instagram alone. To use social networks properly, wine marketers should also consider data from other social networks. Zampollo and Peacock (2016) pointed out that specifically in the field of Food DT, researchers should encompass and encourage a diversity of approaches and tools. Since sharing food images and using various hashtags through social networks is becoming more and more common, sentiment analysis of the social media presence can become a useful tool for the research on the socio-psychological functions of the consumers. It may prove to be a valuable way to apply DT techniques and methodologies in strategic

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marketing, adding up to the insights provided by the traditional forms of consumer research.

Acknowledgment The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences, via IGA grant, No. 2019B0006.

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CHAPTER TEN

Case study: Designing the taste of food waste Jess Canose Food Studies, Falk School of Sustainability & Environment, Chatham University, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

10.1 Introduction Twelfth on the United Nations’ list of goals for 2030 is responsible consumption and production (FAO, 2020a). Part of this goal (Target 12.3) is halving global food waste, which rose to public consciousness only recently. In 2011 shocking findings from the UN global survey on food waste found that one-third of global food is wasted. Countries quickly responded with research of their own (Gunders, 2012; Katsarova, 2014), sparking international attention on household waste, supply chain discrepancies, and what is known today as “ugly” (perfectly edible yet cosmetically unappealing) food. This case study utilizes design thinking to propose a small solution to part of this wicked, unstructured problem that is mired in Marxism, consumer behavior, and cultural norms. Some of these norms are reinforced by food photography, a powerful form of communication that relies on collectively created referent systems and semiotics to impart messages. By employing visual literacy and semiotic techniques, one can understand how photos affect implicit memories and explicit feelings (Ehn, Nilsson, & Topgaard, 2014). This case study prompts readers to challenge assumptions about visual perfection, by exploring subconscious messaging surrounding the cultural standards of “perfection” and “ugliness” in food. In transitioning from passive consumers to active, intentional participants, digital media viewers/creators can collectively create new cultural norms and behaviors. In this manner, this study seeks to redefine and reframe (Dorst, 2011) the problem of “ugly” food waste as a lack of knowledge about “ugly” food and negative associations that stem from a lack of (positive) representation. Currently, an overrepresentation of “perfect” specimens amplifies unrealistic cosmetic expectations and distances viewers from the realities of an imperfect natural world. Although this alone does not account for larger structural failings, it Transdisciplinary Case Studies on Design for Food and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817821-8.00012-6

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identifies a core root of “ugly” food waste, which hinges on consumer purchasing patterns that underlie processing standards, supply, and demand. It is the researcher’s hope that this increased representation could advance acceptance of “ugly” food as edible and worthy of consumption. This chapter first surveys the field of food photography, and to better understand the construction of an image, semiotics and visual literacy. Next, this theoretical framework is applied to international marketing campaigns and non-marketing photographs, featuring “ugly” food. This collection of mini case studies analyze how “ugly” and “beautiful” foods are conceptualized, and how insufficient representation might contribute to the undervaluing and ignorance surrounding “ugly” food. The case study then reverses the process, from deconstructing images to demonstrating the creation of a photograph.

10.1.1 The intersection of food waste and design thinking While the United Nations makes a distinction between food discarded in the fields (food “loss”) and in retail stores/homes (food “waste”), food waste commonly refers to the discarding of food that is safe for human consumption among any sector of the supply chain (FAO, 2020a). Primarily, it is representative of a structural failure, namely, market-driven surplus (Cooks, 2015; United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2017), but “ugly” waste is specifically linked to grading standards. The United Nations operates a Food Loss Index (FLI) to measure loss from post-harvest to distribution, which accounts for 14% of global waste. While it is difficult to obtain metrics, in 2012 the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) (Gunders, 2012) found that, in America “ugly” food represented loss in consumer channels (28%), production (20%), distribution/retail (12%), postharvest (3%), and processing/packing. While “consumer channels” are clearly linked with individual attitudes, post-harvest loss is as well. Culling, or disposing items “on the basis of ripeness, size, color, weight, blemishes, and factors such as Brix level (a measure of sugar content),” (Gunders et al., 2017, p. 14) can occur at both the supermarket and farm. When the cost of labor and transportation outweigh what farmers will be paid for “ugly” food, they may make the decision to plow under entire fields (Gunders, 2012, p. 7). This impact is environmental, economic, social, local, and global, as consumers in import countries “drive farm-level food waste in [export] countries” (Gunders et al., 2017, p. 15).

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In 2014, the European Union declared a “European Year Against Food Waste” (Katsarova, 2014), spurring an international flurry of media attention (Gunders et al., 2017), recovery campaigns, and programs. French supermarket retailer Intermarche quickly took the spotlight, popularizing the term “ugly food” in their Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables campaign (Goodvertising, 2014), which set a stylistic standard for “ugly” marketing images not unlike the one shown in Fig. 10.1. The “ugly” food market has since expanded around the globe to include gleaning programs, products made from “ugly” foods, discounted grocery/community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs, and waste diversion initiatives. These programs, providing a wealth of never-before-seen marketing content focused on “ugly” foods, seek to change consumer beliefs that visual appearance indicates quality. Inadvertently, they also highlight the absence of agricultural realism from our digital media landscape. While most programs focus on the consequences or injustice of food waste (environmental ramifications, hunger, food insecurity), they often overlook the behavioral causes. This is an important oversight; the NRDC urges a realistic update of aesthetic standards upheld by consumers and processors alike (Gunders, 2012). Scientific research on consumer behaviors towards “ugly” food is still sparse (Qi & Roe, 2016), highlighting innate survival practices to preserve physical well-being or social standing (Bunn, Feenstra, Lynch, & Sommer, 1990; Cooks, 2015; De Hoofe et al., 2017).

Fig. 10.1 Classic “ugly” produce image: clean and highly saturated on a white background (Credit: Canose, J. (2019). Photography. https://jesscanose.portfoliobox.net/ [Accessed 16 June 2020].)

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Pierre Bourdieu’s research on habitus Bourdieu (1984) and social capital better elucidates how psychological well-being could be maintained by purchasing more expensive, “perfect” looking foods. Design thinking serves as an appropriate tool to better understand this reality, as it considers the subjective realm of motivations and emotions that underlie behaviors (Dam & Siang, 2020). Reducing food waste by critically analyzing Instagram photos or photographing “ugly” tomatoes is rather indirect. Yet, the larger work of changing cultural norms is served by “alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding” (Dam & Siang, 2020). Critical design’s emphasis on raising awareness of citizens’ passivity by disseminating knowledge and pattern recognition that promotes critical thought fits well here ( Jakobsone, 2017), and is an especially effective method when considering that society today is composed of digital natives (Massari, 2018).

10.2 Theoretical framework 10.2.1 Food photography This case study is built on a transdisciplinary, three-part theoretical framework, merging the fields of food photography, semiotics, and visual literacy. In the sections that follow, the author briefly summarizes the key intersections, extracted from a vast literature analysis. To understand how “ugly” food is represented in photography and advertising, we must first look at the field’s history. Food photography can be defined as a branch of photography that shows an item of food or instance of consumption. The art form descends from fine art paintings (Ventura Thompson, 2014), which may feel more relevant when considering the origins of food styling. Styling or the purposeful arrangement of materials, props, and foods to create a composed photo was quite literally a technological means to achieve a photographer’s vision, combating hot lights and slow cameras to keep “everything alive until shoot time…[or] resuscitat[e] it to make it look beautiful for the camera” (Goldwasser, 1998, p. 58; Ventura Thompson, 2014). In this manner, food photography transforms reality into a detached, timeless replica. The fact that photography freezes time is well known. Yet, Semiologist Roland Barthes was the first to note that this “unbridled beautification… [and reconstitution] through an incongruous artifice” can distance a viewer from the food system (Barthes, 1972, p. 78–79). Photographers have long known that although photographs are decontextualized fragments, “people

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Fig. 10.2 An example of ideology in food photography (Credit: Canose, J. (2019). Photography. https://jesscanose.portfoliobox.net/ [Accessed 16 June 2020].)

readily believe… [a] photograph signifies the real; thus…reality becomes true to the extent it resembles its photograph” (Craven, 1975, pp. 10, 12; Berger, 1972; Berger & Mohr, 1982; Hall, 1997, Anderson, 1973). While this can partly be attributed to the fact that photography offers limitless detail, it fails to consider that a photograph is made; the photographer decides what to include, exclude, and highlight “by imposing a frame on reality” (Craven, 1975, p. 13; Berger & Mohr, 1982; Anderson, 1973). It is especially challenging for the viewer to strip away bias because “[w]hen advertisements put two things side by side so that they coexist, we do not question the sense of it” (Williamson, 1978, p. 29). This concept, called ideology, is especially applicable to food styling, which often presents food out of their natural contexts (see Fig. 10.2). Artistically, this is understandable; yet when these distorted relationships are presented to an audience that is structurally removed from agriculture, “truth” becomes a little more elusive. It is little wonder why design theorists consider “ideology…a means of control over society… [and] at the core of Marxism” ( Jakobsone, 2017, S4260).

10.2.2 Using semiotics How can viewers become more aware of hidden messaging within food imagery? Semiology, paired with visual literacy, is one answer already popular in food design. Semiotics, or “the study of the creation, diffusion and interpretation of meaning” (Parasecoli, 2017, p. 18), guides us in unpacking

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our interpretations or attraction to certain messages. This helps us objectively deconstruct an image and its relationship to broader cultural themes, and along the way leads us to reflect on our own “agency, memory and cognition” (Parasecoli, 2017, p. 18). This structured alternative to opinion-based analysis divides a sign into the form the sign takes (the “signifier”) and the less obvious meaning (the “signified”). Individuals pull from “referent systems,” or systems of meaning we are born into, to create that meaning and attribute it to an image (Williamson, 1978, pp. 17, 19). Caviar, for example, becomes a sign of wealth only through the class differences we construct. Because this system is continually in flux (reinforced or renegotiated by various players), photographs also fluctuate in meaning (Hall, 1997, p. 34). An image’s meaning is therefore formed through a combination of the photographer’s intent, viewer’s interpretation, and referent system of the times (Yin, 2001). Advertisers often purposefully manipulate these paths of interpretation to change the ways we interpret an advertisement and our relationship to or within it. Jacques Lacan’s “mirror phase” explains how, through an image, advertisers transfer what a product represents (the economic ability to purchase, high or low self-esteem, etc.) to the owner (Williamson, 1978). This is impactful, especially when considering that a 2018 scientific study showed consumer purchasing behaviors (surrounding “ugly” food) are motivated by subconscious inferences and altered self-perceptions (Grewal et al., 2018). In other words, researchers found that individuals felt “ugly” purchases reflected poorly upon themselves, lowering their self-esteem. Bolstering our referent systems are cultural binaries (Hall, 1997, p. 10) such as old/young and nature/civilization. Today’s ugly/beauty binary has come a long way from its origins as a necessary union, “as happens in nature” (Eco, 2007, p. 279). The nature/civilization binary presents often in food photographs, wherein nature is conceptualized as uneducated or unruly, scientific, or virtuous and romanticized (Williamson, 1978, p. 114). Claude Levi-Strauss’ groundbreaking theory takes this further, explaining why food images generally mimic or show nature only after it has been safely transformed. When seamless tomatoes are arranged messily on a plate to mimic nature’s disorder (see Fig. 10.2 for a reminder), the “‘raw’, the natural object, becomes in this context a symbol, not of nature, but…of the culture that has worked it over” (Williamson, 1978, p. 104; Levi-Strauss, 1966). It is understandably difficult for viewers to untangle what is being misrepresented when images invite us to look through a particular lens, “so we forget to look at it” (Williamson, 1978, p. 136).

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10.2.3 Using visual literacy Scientific advancement has proven that lived and mediated images are coded in our brains as if they are real, “affect[ing] our actions before being processed by…rational thought” (Williams & Newton, 2007, xv). The power of this false reality is frightening, especially when considering how capitalist practices have dominated agricultural markets to create allencompassing new realities. Misinformation via social media easily feeds that vicious cycle. Visual literacy, or “the ability to interpret, critique, create, and use visual communication” (Williams & Newton, 2007, xv), is the systemic tool needed to navigate this false, digital, and communal reality. In fact, visual literacy advocates have fought to include these skills in traditional schooling. Why should students learn to be literate in reading, but not other images, especially when “[s]eeing comes before words” (Berger, 1972, p. 7)? Visual literacy offers viewers a set of skills to break down an image into its design and semiotic elements. Viewers are recommended to start with artistic elements, evaluating design principles (contrast, rhythm, balance, proportion); characteristics (tone, texture and pattern); aspects of graphic structure (movement, vectors, centers of interest, rule of thirds, scale, spatiality, perspective, light, context); how unity is achieved; and cultural biases (Williams & Newton, 2007, p. 264). After deconstructing an image into its design parts, Paul Lester’s “Six Perspectives” offer questions to evaluate the image as a whole. These include identifying one’s subjective response; the photo’s chronological perspective; technical elements; the purpose and consequence of the work; how the work conveys meaning; and its political, economic, and power-holding context (Williams & Newton, 2007, p. 289). A third technique is to free associate words that are prompted by the image, select those most meaningful, and draw connections between the words and one’s inner self. This technique prompts the viewer to explore the psychological impact an image has on them, and identify exactly how the image has that effect.

10.3 Case study 10.3.1 Methodology As stated earlier, this case study begins by surveying how food photography functions as a method of communication, and conversely, how semiotics and visual literacy can be used to deconstruct those messages. The following collection of analyses (selected from over twenty analyses conducted

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between 2018 and 2020) aim to understand how “ugly” produce is represented and brainstorm innovative ways to redefine the narrative. As there can be no one “true” interpretation of a photo, the author utilizes both inductive and abductive reasoning (Dorst, 2011), exploring how an image could lead the viewer to interpret different messages. The photographs analyzed in Sections 10.3.2, 10.3.3, and 10.3.4 were chosen to be representative of a variety of fields, including marketing, fine art photography, and amateur Instagram photography. Section 10.3.5 reverses the process, working backwards from the “desired value” (positive associations attributed to “ugly” food) to construct an image (Dorst, 2011). Transitioning between viewer and photographer brought new perspective to each photograph. For that reason, the analyses were conducted simultaneously and continuously edited, as findings from one photograph would influence the perception of another (and are certainly never complete). Representing the ideation and prototyping process of design, the following critical analysis provides messy insight on the potentiality of an image, and displays how a reader may engage in this method on their own. Outside of the scope of this chapter, this case study analyzed more than twelve image groupings, and designed three marketing campaign prototypes for an ugly CSA program. The prototypes were to be used (i.e., tested) to market the nonprofit’s 2018 CSA season; however, they were used for customer education instead. This nonlinear case study therefore returned to its ideation phase, and has since reshaped into an independent project.

10.3.2 Marketing image from Hungry Harvest Very rarely do “ugly” CSA marketing images display more than a scrubbed, sterile, and highly saturated vegetable, placed against a white backdrop with bright light highlighting the “ugly” element (see Fig. 10.1 for a quick reminder). A quick search of “ugly food images” on open image source Shutterstock shows dozens of these images that are used across the nonprofit food waste field and even by the United Nations (FAO, 2018). Americanbased Hungry Harvest’s marketing photos are notable in that they portray a set of scenes, perhaps an attempt to represent “reality.” Yet in Fig. 10.3, a hand holds a small sweet potato or yam in front of a clean (non-industrial) wooden crate full of irregularly sized companions. Why is the small, regular sweet potato highlighted in the foreground, instead of the “ugly” ones below? It is ironic that even a rescued produce company chooses to showcase the most “beautiful” of the bunch. In consideration of the images’

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Fig. 10.3 First in a series of Hungry Harvest marketing photos. (Credit: Reproduced with permission from Hungry Harvest. Hungry Harvest ❤ farmers markets. (2020). https://www. hungryharvest.net/blog/2019/5/23/hungry-harvest-farmers-markets [Accessed 16 June 2020].)

technical elements, the colors are warm, and the potato’s lines follow the curves of the hand, which within the photographer’s framing (taken from above, at an angle) appears small yet powerful. A hand coming from the top of the photograph, rather than the bottom, gives the image a sense of control and direction. The hand/vegetable proportions may be a way to invoke empathy in the viewer, following the narrative that “ugly” produce is manageable and normal, cute even. Arguably, the most important element in the image is the hand itself: pale, clean, trimmed fingernails, likely gendered, and adorned by an out-of-place, oversized silver ring. The color contrast (silver and purple) against beige hands and a broad orange backdrop directs the viewer’s eye to the ring on the subject’s index finger. The image’s focus therefore becomes the hand holding the sweet potato, a relationship that the viewer is forced to consider. The repetition of hands in Hungry Harvest’s photo series could function in multiple ways. Positively, this may ask viewers to consider the farmer, reflecting on the larger supply chain and practice of food waste. Yet the exclusion of dirt, harvesting equipment, or any realistic agricultural elements make clear that these photos are taken post-harvest, after culture has safely transformed nature (Williamson, 1978). The hands (also present in other photos in the series) appear to be singularly white, and abide by classically stereotyped gender expressions (hairy/large and small/ring-adorned). This

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gendered and racialized statement, intentional or not, is powerful. It may be a potential claim to superiority, or a specific (inaccurate) appeal to white viewers that people like them (who they perhaps respect more) do the work, or make up the stories that bring this “ugly” food to the table. The presence of the ring may attempt to smooth over economic injustices present in the food system by indicating wealth and appealing to an upper-class audience’s cultural biases (Williams & Newton, 2007). Conversely, this may be advertisement’s use of the semiotic technique of “mirror phase”; if other well-todo white individuals are buying “ugly” produce to support a good cause, why shouldn’t they? This feels especially poignant when considering Paul Lester’s “cultural and critical perspectives,” contextually evaluating how the work conveys meaning within economic and power-holding structures (Williams and Newton, 2007, p. 289).

10.3.3 Instagram image from “Ugly” Fruit and Veg Jordan Figueiredo’s “’Ugly’ Fruit and Veg” campaign operates largely out of Instagram, where Jordan reposts or uploads images of “ugly” produce photographed at the dinner table, grocery store, or farm. The images are generally less artistic, lacking styling, often blurry, taken in poor lighting, or simple in composition. The crowdsourced photographs engage viewers through humor, relying on captions to anthropomorphize the vegetable’s oddities or butternut squash “butts” (“Ugly” Fruit & Veg, 2019). In Figueiredo’s own words, the campaign’s goal is to “celebrat[e] the imperfections of produce—and of life” (O’Reilly, 2016). This informal, participatory approach inarguably contributes to increased “ugly” representation, and potentially positive association, as well. One photograph from September 2019 shows two bright pink conjoined radishes that form a misshapen heart (see Fig. 10.4). The photographer’s framing creates a strong center of interest, as the radish bulbs, photographed from above, are laid across a backdrop of bright green leaves. While the image is a bit blurry, it is zoomed in enough to show the spiky hairs on the underside of the radish leaves. The lighting appears to be natural, with cool tones, and accurately bright colors. Upon further inspection, it is interesting to note that the original post on the farm’s Instagram (Hutchins Farm, 2019) is zoomed out, indicating that Figueiredo likely zoomed in on the radishes, so they were centered. While this may just be a technological one-off, it changes the image’s design elements significantly. The composition (showing the radish’s root and stems), rule

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Fig. 10.4 “Ugly” radish posted to Instagram in late 2019. (Credit: Reproduced with permission from Hutchins Farm (2019, August 31). “A little radish love ❤ Stand is open regular hours this weekend (Sat and Sun 11-6) and we’re at the @unionsqmarket today 9-1, and we’ll be at the @centralsqmarket on Monday 12-6 as usual! Happy Labor Day Weekend everyone!”. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/B11IDhBA-FM/ [Accessed 16 June 2020].)

of thirds, and vectors are entirely disrupted. The spatiality, afforded by the larger scale is lost, falling directly in line with traditional “ugly” marketing images that shamelessly zero in on the “defect” or abnormality. While the hashtags the account uses (#Funactivism, #UglyReallyIsBeautiful, #LoveTheUgly) promote acceptance, this framing may do the opposite, treating “ugly” foods as specimens for show. The chronological and contextual analysis of both photographs is powerful, however, in how it places the viewer directly on the farm. Everything is covered in a sheen of rich, brown dirt; it is clear that the photographer, likely working on the harvest crew at Hutchins Farm, took this during a harvest. This image is a rarity in the world of food photography; farmers are understandably not prioritizing photography while working. Yet that means “ugly” images are almost always taken post-processing, and the rarities that we see on-farm are of hearts or conjoined root vegetables. To the farmer, the rest is “normal”; to the public, the singular “perfect” specimen is “normal.” The image’s accompanying tagline, “Love Your Veggies and they Love You

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Back! ❤ Pic by @hutchins_farm” (“Ugly” Fruit & Veg, 2019) similarly capitalizes on the heart, a classic “ugly” trope. Drawing from the wordassociation technique, however, it is easy to see how a beautifully colored, bright pink heart could possibly invoke feelings of warmth, happiness, and tenderness in the viewer towards this “ugly” food.

10.3.4 Professional fine art image from Ugly Produce is Beautiful The fruits and vegetables in photographer Sarah Phillips’ Ugly Produce is Beautiful series are arranged into brightly colorful, patterned mosaics or dynamic still lifes (Phillips, 2019). The results are visually stunning, displaying complex compositions, contrasting tones, high color contrast, and dramatic lighting, contributing emotional depth. These are clearly distinct from traditional “ugly” marketing images, following artistic rules and structure. One image (available on Phillips’ website or Instagram) offers rich blue tones from a velvety fabric backdrop, and displays three pears with an intensity to detail not found in any of the previous photos. The pale green pears are scarred and blemished, yet the water droplets clinging to their surfaces confirm they are firm and not mushy. Of hundreds of “ugly” images surveyed, this is the sole one that shows a reflection, something that could be interpreted as a signal of grace and humanity. In this context, “ugly” food is an entity of its own, allowed to hold and look upon its own reflection, rather than be objectified for the human eye. It is a story, rather than a specimen. The presence of a reflection may also function as a practice for the viewer to recall the organic, circular processes of nature, or reflect on the artificiality of our food system. Or perhaps this is a reflection on what “ugliness” is: “a necessary moment that comes into collision with beauty” (Marcus Auerlius’ System of Aesthetics cited in Eco, 2007, p. 279). Dried, light pink flower buds, scattered among the pears, provide an interesting corollary in the discussion between life and death. Is this juxtaposed to remind the reader that all life ends, and our notions of perfectionism are short sighted? While the flowers could be considered a miscorrelation of nature, as they are not pear blossoms, they may also hold artistic value. Resisting the danger of overstyling, the image’s artistic “beauty” (produced through elements of design) is not achieved by eliminating the pears’ “ugliness” or focusing on their distortions. This is unlike a few other images in Phillips’ series that fail to show the “ugliness.” This poses an interesting question: if one never sees the “ugliness,” favoring its post-transformation or edibility instead, can it truly be embraced?

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Phillips’ photographic style and styling also has unique historical context, invoking food photography’s origins in replicating still life paintings, showing food “not as one would eat it, but before it ha[d] been prepared into food” (Bright, 2017, p. 27). Her use of the Renaissance-era Chiaroscuro (“dark and moody”) style uses deep shadows and highlights to bring a central focus to the pears (Ventura Thompson, 2014). Playing with dimensionality in this way is a unique commentary on what is real; the flowers, not the “ugly” items, are shrouded in darkness and appear twodimensional. It is easy to follow how a viewer may interpret this display of “ugliness,” worthy of existing in the light, as an essential part of nature, rather than an absurdity.

10.3.5 Creating a photograph: Author’s image There are many ways to create positive associations with “ugly” food, from challenging belief systems, to linking “ugliness” with self-esteem, to educating consumers. The image in Fig. 10.5 (Canose, 2019) represents one of a few approaches, responding to a common trope in food advertisements that presents goods as stable and impervious to time (Barthes, 1972; Williamson, 1978). This advertising campaign aimed to show a realistic passing of time, to mark the continuum between “ugly” and rotten; one grouping shows the life cycle of an “ugly” pomegranate (flowering, on the tree, harvested, and rotten). Scientific studies have found that participants are more open to purchasing scarred items when educational information is provided

Fig. 10.5 A lesson in quality standards brought to you by “ugly” peaches. (Credit: Canose, J. (2019). Photography. https://jesscanose.portfoliobox.net/ [Accessed 16 June 2020].)

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(Bunn et al., 1990). This, in tandem with federal recommendations to educate consumers worldwide on quality standards, inspired this campaign (Gunders, 2012; FAO, 2020b). In a direct attempt to appeal to viewers who will purchase “ugly” food to cook at home (demonstrating “mirror phase”), Fig. 10.5 sets the viewer in front of a wooden cutting board as if they are slicing into the peaches themselves. The light source comes from in front of the viewer (perhaps a kitchen window) and displays colors naturally, a balance between the warmth of the peaches and cool blue background tones. As the majority of individuals are right handed, the knife lies on the right side of a collection of peaches. The grouping, showing variously shaded and shaped peaches in the background, aims to invoke community and normalize differences. The image is intentionally minimalist in its construction and styling (not showing the knife quality, for example) to minimize noise that could lead the viewer to alternative interpretations. The photo’s colors make the focal point clear: the glistening inside of the peach, a bright tangerine orange. The beads of moisture on the slice indicate freshness, juice, and summertime; the clean cut into the dull fuzzy exterior proves that the peach is firm. The “ugly” elements (scarring, blue-white fuzz, and slight bruising) are visually overshadowed by the brightly colored inner fruit. By displaying both the exterior and interior of the “ugly” peach, the viewer is (ideally) left to deduce that an ugly exterior does not indicate a lesser-quality interior.

10.4 Conclusion Significantly reducing food waste necessitates an overhaul of our capitalist-structured food system, a task not easily accomplishable. While “ugly” food waste is a small portion of this problem, it is a significant and accessible place to start. This chapter argues that normalizing “ugly” produce by displaying it positively through food photography will help create embedded social capital, eliminate stigma, and improve consumer attitudes towards purchasing. This puts the onus on the viewer; the time one spends questioning underlying assumptions, by using the tools of visual literacy and semiotics, increases self-awareness and unearths alternative interpretations. Within the context of this study, the author found a gradient of interpretations after analyzing the same images for months. This work is grounded in understanding the viewer because art is personal and purposeful in triggering thoughts and emotions. Yet the biggest limitation of this case study is that it has yet to be tested and lacks the

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community input vital to a meaningful outcome. This study can only reach its fullest critical and participatory design potential when it is diffused among the public. This could take many forms, including a formal community design test, sharing the framework on social media, or merely asking individuals to leave their analyses in Instagram comments. In this study, technology serves a powerful supporting role, helping individuals reflect on the connection between their public and private power; consuming media, dispersing information, starting conversations about value shifts, and forming the networks that create awareness and vitalize public discussions. Ideally, these value shifts would support the inclusion of visual literacy in school curriculums, extending this critical approach and liberation from ideology to other subjects (Ehn et al., 2014). This strong, easy-to-follow transdisciplinary framework for observing bias is essential for creating and consuming content. While many CSAs and nonprofits use open-source images to cut costs, it is equally important to make sure that the visual narrative of “ugly” foods they are promoting supports their overall mission. This design is not shortsightedly focused on sales, however; it also supports emotional well-being, taking into account the science that proves individuals find their own flaws reflected in “ugly” vegetables. This approach asks viewers to reconsider that relationship, be it through acceptance and personal growth, or identifying the incorrect cultural narrative of “ugly” food being less worthy or abnormal. For a world that is increasingly Marxist, where agriculture is a reality only for those who work in the fields, mobilizing photography to work against food waste is a necessary strategy. The funneling effect of increased representation, education (teaching quality standards that better match the reality of our natural world), and acceptance can work together to create new values and culture surrounding “ugly” food. Equally as important, it can bring awareness to the divide between fiction and reality, challenging the formation of a collective memory based on incorrect assumptions that all produce is perfect, and we can support a healthy food system through such purchases. This, in essence, is food design.

References Anderson, A. (1973). The artistic side of photography. New York: Anro Press. Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Berger, J. (1972). Ways of seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation. Berger, J., & Mohr, J. (1982). Another way of telling. New York: Vintage Books. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Bright, S. (2017). Feast for the eyes: The story of food in photography. New York: Aperture. Bunn, D., Feenstra, G., Lynch, L., & Sommer, R. (1990). Consumer acceptance of cosmetically imperfect produce. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 24(2), 268–279. Canose, J. (2019). Photography. https://jesscanose.portfoliobox.net/ [Accessed 16 June 2020]. Cooks, L. (2015). Constructing taste and waste as habitus: Food and matters of access and in/ security. In S. Boerboom (Ed.), The political language of food (pp. 123–140). London: Lexington Books. Craven, G. (1975). Object and image: An introduction to photography. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Dam, R. F., & Siang, T. Y. (2020). What is design thinking and why is it so popular? In Interaction Design Foundation. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/ what-is-design-thinking-and-why-is-it-so-popular#:
:text¼What%20is%20Design% 20Thinking%3F,our%20initial%20level%20of%20understanding (Accessed 16 June 2020). De Hoofe, I., et al. (2017). This apple is too ugly for me!: Consumer preference for suboptimal food products in the supermarket and at home. Food Quality and Preference, 56, 80–92. Dorst, K. (2011). The core of ‘design thinking’ and its application. Design Studies, 32(6), 521– 532. Eco, U. (2007). On ugliness. New York: Rizzoli Publishers. Ehn, P., Nilsson, E., & Topgaard, R. (Eds.). (2014). Making futures: Marginal notes on innovation, design, and democracy. Cambridge, MA; London, England: The MIT Press. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). (2018). Beauty (and taste!) are on the inside: Why loving ugly fruit and vegetables is good for the environment, the economy and a #ZeroHunger world. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. http:// www.fao.org/fao-stories/article/en/c/1100391/ (Accessed 16 June 2020). Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). (2020a). Sustainable development goals: Indicator 12.3.1 - Global food loss and waste. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. http://www.fao.org/sustainable-development-goals/ indicators/12.3.1/en/ (Accessed 16 June 2020). Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). (2020b). Food loss and food waste. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. http. ://www.fao.org/ food-loss-and-food-waste/en/ (Accessed 16 June 2020). Goldwasser, A. (1998). Fashion plate. I.D. Magazine of International Design, 4(6), 58–59. Goodvertising. (2014). Intermarche: Inglorious fruits and vegetables. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/ 98441820 (Accessed 29 May 2020). Grewal, L., et al. (2018). The self-perception connection: Why consumers devalue unattractive produce. Journal of Marketing, 83(1), 89–107. Gunders, D. (2012). Wasted: How America is losing up to 40 percent of its food from farm to fork to landfill. (NRDC issue paper IP:12-06-B). National Resources Defense Council. https:// www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf (Accessed 16 June 2020). Gunders, D., et al. (2017). Wasted: How America is losing up to 40 percent of its food from farm to fork to landfill: Second edition of NRDC’s original 2012 report. (NRDC issue paper R: 17-05-A). National Resources Defense Council. https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/ wasted-2017-report.pdf (Accessed 16 June 2020). Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. London: Sage Publications. Hutchins Farm. (2019, August 31). A little radish love ❤ Stand is open regular hours this weekend (Sat and Sun 11-6) and we’re at the @unionsqmarket today 9-1, and we’ll be at the @centralsqmarket on Monday 12-6 as usual! Happy Labor Day Weekend everyone!. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/B11IDhBA-FM/ (Accessed 16 June 2020).

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Jakobsone, L. (2017). Critical design as approach to next thinking. The Design Journal, 20(1), S4253–S4262. Katsarova, I. (2014). Tackling Food Waste: The EU’s Contribution to a Global Issue. (Briefing No. 130678REV1). European parliamentary research service. https://www.europarl. europa.eu/RegData/bibliotheque/briefing/2014/130678/LDM_BRI(2014)130678_ REV1_EN.pdf (Accessed 16 June 2020). Levi-Strauss, C. (1966). The culinary triangle. Partisan Review, 33(4), 586–595. Massari, S. (2018, May). Perche il cibo ha bisogno del design (Video file) https://www.youtube. com/watch?v¼fnnoYjFfzvI (Accessed 18 June 2020). O’Reilly, K. (2016). 10 Innovative solutions to food waste. Sierra. https://www.sierraclub.org/ sierra/2016-4-july-august/green-life/10-innovative-solutions-food-waste (Accessed 16 June 2020). Parasecoli, F. (2017). Food, research, design: What can food studies bring to food design education? International Journal of Food Design, 2(1), 15–25. Phillips, S. (2019). Ugly produce is beautiful. http://www.uglyproduceisbeautiful.com (Accessed 29 May 2020). Qi, D., & Roe, B. E. (2016). Household food waste: Multivariate regression and principal components analyses of awareness and attitudes among U.S. consumers. PLoS One, 11(7), e0159250. “Ugly” Fruit & Veg. (2019, September 19). Love Your Veggies and they Love You Back! ❤ Pic by @hutchins_farm. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/B2mbSnmJwYh (Accessed 16 June 2020). United States Environmental Protection Agency (2017). Sustainable management of food: Food recovery hierarchy. https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/food-recoveryhierarchy (Accessed 16 June 2020). Ventura Thompson, H. G. (2014). Archives: The history of food photography. http:// helengraceventurathompson.com/blog/historyoffoodphotography/ (Accessed 26 February 2017). Williams, R., & Newton, J. (2007). Visual communication: Integrating media, art and science. New York: Routledge. Williamson, J. (1978). Decoding advertisements: Ideology and meaning in advertising. London: Marion Boyars Publishing. Yin, S. (2001). Marketing tools: The power of images. American Demographics, November, 32–33.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

School dining hall consumption: “Come dine with me” Gurpinder Singh Lalli University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, United Kingdom

11.1 Introduction This chapter provides a case study of critical food design for education (Lalli, 2017a) from the United Kingdom (UK) in which notions of school dining are introduced and the idea of a “restaurant” as a place for school meal consumption is contested. So what is it that makes a school dining hall modern and appropriate? In a teacher-focused environment, architects have considered factors which include the space in terms of thinking through the required capacity in designing the school, which ultimately aims to become fit for teachers to be able to instruct (Darian-Smith & Willis, 2016). Traditionally, while this view holds weight, the schools of the twenty-first century have begun to think about how to use the rest of the school space outside of the classroom (Hughes, Franz, & Willis, 2019). The “restaurant” at Peartree Academy (a pseudonym) presents an innovative case study and an alternative way of thinking about mealtime. The idea of a “pedagogic meal” (Sepp, Abrahamsson, & Fjellstrom, 2006) is also discussed, which supports the discussion on critical food design in education because it offers a new way of using school mealtime to create opportunities of formal learning. This chapter introduces this very narrative in which opportunities for informal social learning are said to come to fruition (Lalli, 2019). However, without paying close attention to the aesthetics of the school dining space, achieving inclusivity can be problematic. Further works on school dining spaces are needed, based on the potential benefits they can bring.

11.2 Case study focus An ethnographic case study was carried out to investigate mealtime experiences in a UK academy school (referred to as Peartree Academy) Transdisciplinary Case Studies on Design for Food and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817821-8.00004-7

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in which the traditional canteen was relabeled as the “restaurant” (Lalli, 2017b, 2019). Following the rebuilding of a struggling school, a unique and contemporary design was developed, and it is the power of how this space is being designed that is particularly important in school meal reform. Considering the school dining space as the “third teacher” can help create a culture of surveillance while allowing social activity of all groups in a fixed space to occur. This is a new way of looking at the design of school dining spaces. The restaurant at the school dominates the right-hand side of the main building upon entering the reception area. The restaurant is exceptionally spacious and well lit by natural lighting. The design of the restaurant is an open plan, which means easy access for everyone. The main staffroom is situated opposite the restaurant, some classrooms, and the reception desk. The rectangular and circular tables in the school restaurant are a shift away from the rows of tables seen in a traditional school canteen. There is a random combination of tables with each one decorated with a vase of fresh flowers. The restaurant at Peartree Academy has a nurturing and bright presence within the school, acting as the focal point. Symbolic attachments to school buildings are said to yield benefits to mealtime experiences. In a study by Nicholson (2005), the school building was identified as the “third teacher.” Following project work in communities based in California, Nicholson identified the importance of environmental factors and in this case the school building as a tool for fulfilling ideas about how children learn, what they learn, and how they are taught (Nicholson, 2005, p. 45). Aside from educational objectives, Nicholson (2005) discussed how the school building acted as a pillar for building respect in children while making a difference in their life experiences. For Nicholson (2005), even choices made by the school were seen to carry certain values and symbolic messages. This highlights the importance of the school environment and perhaps the reason why the design of school dining halls has gained exposure. In terms of learning-related behaviors, there is a growing trend in the exploration of school design and architecture. Over 12 weeks, across six primary schools in Sheffield, UK, Golley et al. (2010) investigated the impact of improvements made to the dining environment on learning-related behaviors using observational techniques to gather behavioral patterns one hour after pupils had eaten. The researchers selected the schools on the basis that four of them had their dining halls revamped, whereas the other two schools did not have any interventions. Changes to the dining environment included a new queuing system, redecoration, introduction of artwork, murals, and new furniture. The study found that pupils in the intervention

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schools were 3.4 times more likely to be “on-task” in the “teacher–pupil” social mode compared with pupils in the non-intervention schools. However, regarding the “pupil–pupil” social mode, pupils in the intervention schools were 2.3 times more likely to be “off-task” than those in the non-intervention schools. This study shows that a more modernized dining environment can have an impact on pupils’ ability to learn after lunch. The approach adopted by Peartree Academy in the design stages of the school restaurant involved aesthetic changes to the dining facilities and space.

11.3 Methodology Ethnography, which is traditionally associated with using a qualitative research framework, is the main methodological framework used for this study (Atkinson & Hammersley, 2007). The research for this study consisted of carrying out 80 h of semi-structured observations and 54 semi-structured interviews that took place in the school dining hall, around the school, and in the staffrooms and classrooms. The data were analyzed using a thematic approach in which coding processes were used to group emergent themes. Essentially, ethnography is an approach typically found in social science research; its origins are in Western anthropology in which “ethnography” became the term used to describe a community or culture. Ethnography is said to play a complex and shifting role in the dynamic and fast-paced discipline that the social sciences have become. This methodological approach also refers to design. Ethnographers typically engage with a community by immersing themselves into ‘the field,” overtly or covertly engaging with the daily lives of people for an extended period of time (Atkinson & Hammersley, 2007). To provide further detail, ethnographic work comprises five specific features including: 1. Studying people’s actions and accounts in all contexts, rather than under conditions created by the researcher. 2. Gathering data from a range of sources including documentary evidence of various kinds, especially participant observation and/or relatively informal conversations. 3. Collecting data in an “unstructured” manner, that is, not following a fixed and detailed research design specific at the start and using categories for interpreting what people say or do that are generated out of the process of data analysis (i.e., categories that are not built into the data collection process through the use of observation schedules or questionnaires).

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4. Focusing on a few cases that are fairly small scale, perhaps a single setting or group of people, to facilitate an in-depth study. 5. Analyzing data by interpreting meanings, functions, and consequences of human actions and institutional practices, and determining how these are implicated in local and wider contexts (Atkinson & Hammersley, 2007, p. 3). The rationale for using ethnographic techniques was influenced by the work of previous educational ethnographies (Ball, 1981; Burgess, 1983; Nasirian, 2013; Pike, 2010). However, it is important to highlight the limitations of using ethnography, most notably relating to the validity of the research. In essence, the rationale for using ethnography is formed on the basis of being critical of quantitative approaches, most traditionally experimental and survey research (Hammersley, 2013). Ethnography is typically criticized for making claims about what happens in “natural” settings based on data produced in settings that have been specifically set up by the researcher. In addition, ethnography sometimes neglects the complex relationship of attitudes and behavior (i.e., becoming reliant on what people say about what they do without observing behavior). Finally, the nature of the data collection process involves the researcher’s assumptions about the social world, which means data gathered from an ethnography becomes somewhat “subjective” (Hammersley, 2013). At this point, it is useful to present a thicker description of the school restaurant at Peartree Academy, the site used for data collection over an extended period. This ethnographic account introduces the first impressions of the school and the dining hall: Field notes It was a frosty winter’s morning, at 8 o’clock on 16th January 2012 as I approached with some trepidation the school I later called Peartree Academy. The entrance was unusual. On the left and built as part of the school, was a church. I discovered later that the church was regularly used by the local community and ceremonies such as baptisms and marriages as well as funerals took place during the week even when the school was open. On the right, was the school reception where all visitors were asked to sign in before proceeding. Walking straight ahead and through the doors into the school, I was faced with a surprise. The area that lay in front of me was a wideopen space filled with tables attractively grouped to provide seating from small to large numbers of people. On each table stood a small vase of fresh flowers and the whole eating area shone with cleanliness and care. Even though this was before the start of the school day, I saw children eating breakfast, parents talking to one another, a few adults whom I assumed to be the teachers chatting in groups, stood around the edge of the dining area. Later in the day, after I talked with the principal, I returned to the dining area, when children were coming in for lunch. This area was known as ’the restaurant’ and it became my main research site for collecting data.

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The remainder of this chapter contains three sections. The first section introduces the symbolic nature of the school building as the “third teacher,” in which, fundamentally, the design of the school building can lend itself to creating a more inviting and airy space that has an impact on the atmosphere of its participants. The second section introduces the notion of the “pedagogic meal,” (Sepp et al., 2006) a term originally coined in Sweden in the 1970s. This introduces the idea of using school mealtime as a teaching occasion. The concluding section consolidates the discussions in moving the field forward in highlighting how such a thought-out and meticulous design of school dining halls influences educational practices.

11.4 School building as the “third teacher” It is common to proclaim that certain areas of the school, including empty spaces and waiting spaces outside, are often overlooked. This opens up an avenue to explore such spaces, one of which is the school dining space, which in this context is referred to as the “third teacher” (Nicholson, 2005). Nicholson (2005) argues that pupils have an awareness of the symbolic messages attached to a school building and points out how schools are now becoming more physically attractive in order to foster opportunities for social interaction. This section highlights the impact of the school restaurant as a fixture in the school and how it can have a positive influence on pupils’ eating behaviors. It is argued that the restaurant is one part of the school building that acts as a third teacher in order to foster opportunities for children to socialize. In doing so, taking consideration in designing a suitable space is critical. The idea of healthy children, which dates back to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, has massively influenced the design of schools, and key texts written by architects have supported this narrative (Barnard, 1850; Donovan, 1921; Otto, 1963; Robson, 1874). In the field notes below, I observe how the restaurant potentially acts as a third teacher (Nicholson, 2005). By this, Nicholson (2005) highlighted the importance of the environment in complementing the educational and social support of the pedagogy. In this example, I describe the restaurant as a common room space:

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Field notes It is also a space in the school which I can see has the potential to allow pupils and staff to interact with one another. So far, outside of the lunch period, I have seen the restaurant in constant use, particularly at times when food isn’t being consumed. It is what I would call a common room space, where pupils and staff are able to sit, talk and catch up throughout the school day. The main activity at times outside the lunch period is purely conversation between various year groups, staff and parents.

This highlights how the restaurant can be used to help foster opportunities for conversation and social learning to take place. The wall displays in the school restaurant carry messages that are directed at pupils. I was able to capture the content of the display by recording them in the field notes. Eight key messages were displayed above the buffet aisle and kitchen. This was in view of all of those who entered the school restaurant. For example: Field notes

1. ‘5 a day’—Important to eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day. 2. ‘Meal time’—I’m eating 3 meals a day including healthy school lunch. 3. ‘Me size meals’—I’m eating meals that are the right size for my age, not as big as grown-ups. 4. ‘Cut back fat’—My family is changing how we cook to make our meals more healthy. 5. ‘Snack check’—Lots of snacks are full of fat, sugar and salt so I’m eating healthy snacks! 6. ‘Sugar swaps’—I’m swapping sugary drinks for water, milk or unsweetened fruit juice. 7. ‘Up and about’—After I’ve been sitting still for a while, I’m jumping up and doing something more active. 8. ‘60 interactive minutes’—I’m spending at least 60 min walking, playing a sport, running around, or playing outside every day.

For me, these messages are the school’s attempt to control the daily eating behaviors of pupils in the school restaurant. These displays are arguably an example of how visual aids are used in the school to help foster opportunities for developing positive eating behaviors (Eliassen, 2011). In terms of this notion of the third teacher, it could be said that the restaurant was designed to allow pupils to converse with one another while gaining opportunities for learning. However, other staff are more concerned with managing behavior in the restaurant and it is these pressures that seem to be working against the

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restaurant being an informal community forum. The restaurant has a presence in the school and clearly has the potential to foster opportunities for social learning, which are being taken by some of the staff in the school. This section has demonstrated how a school dining space can be used to enrich the experiences of pupils.

11.4.1 The “pedagogic meal” It is useful to consider how associations to the school meal and learning have been defined and, more importantly, which term has been used to identify this phenomenon. It is the notion of the “pedagogic meal” (Sepp et al., 2006) that has been commonly referred to as finding a way to link school food with learning. There has been a growing interest in the study of food pedagogies (Andersen, 2015; Osowski, Goranzon, & Fjellstrom, 2013; Pike & Leahy, 2012; Sepp et al., 2006). Sepp et al. (2006) carried out thirty-four interviews across twelve pre-schools in Sweden to explore school meals. The staff provided strong views on how food and meals should be integrated into their daily work and pedagogic activities (Sepp et al., 2006). The teachers identified their uncertainties around the “meal situation,” as they lacked knowledge and understanding around food and nutrition. During interviews, participants declared in the past that they did not eat with the children at the dinner table and had difficulties in acting as role models. However, in recent times, staff have been encouraged to socialize with the children at the dinner table even if they are not inclined to do so or have not been shown how to socialize. The democratic approach to education in Sweden seems to be reflected in their approach to the school meal, which is one of integration and another informal learning opportunity (Mavrovounioti, 2010). Although most staff in the dining hall had a good understanding of the pedagogic meal, they remained uncertain of how to present themselves during the meal given the lack of training and guidance available in teacher education programs. The design of the space has an impact on whether such a social occasion can be created. Sepp et al. (2006) identified how food education occurs early in life for children as they develop preferences for taste, table manners, and attitudes towards food. Moreover, it is these attitudes and behaviors that are communicated through the food and meal situation. There is certain behavior that is seen as acceptable food-related behavior. Furthermore, they identify how part of this socialization takes place in pre-school tables where behaviors are modeled by staff and pupils. Overall, it is important to address early childhood and the school meal, as this helps to

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build the foundation of practicing a pedagogic meal. The findings highlighted that staff had a good understanding in encouraging the children to help themselves, as well as acting as adult role models at the table (Sepp et al., 2006, p. 227), for example, showing the children how to handle cutlery, pass each other food, sit on a chair appropriately, and have a conversation. They pointed out how the task of sitting and eating with children and teaching them skills to interact was a task in itself. It is important to consider the social and cultural aspects of children’s food habits, including their attitudes behind food choices, as these are important factors from a health perspective (Fjellstrom, 2004, p. 161) and in thinking about sustainable ways of being (Filho & Kovaleva, 2014). It was also recognized how different dimensions of the meal situation can be observed through looking at the time, space, and social aspects. It was argued how universal definitions of the “meal” lacked any idea of “social dimensions.” By this, Fjellstrom meant discussing the meal sitatuation, meal order, meal patterns, and meal situations, which include practices and rituals at the dining table (Fjellstrom, 2004, p. 161). Fjellstrom (2004) discusses how a “proper meal” differs amongst Nordic countries, from the structure, daily rhythm, and social context of eating. Janhonen, Benn, Fjellstrom, Makela, and Palojoki (2013) argued that meals that echoed the structural definition of a proper meal were most common when describing meals for the family. Fjellstrom (2004) made an interesting point regarding the relationship between pedagogy and food in a food situation. The social interaction between parents and children in a supermarket has an impact on food purchases and choices in everyday life. This is an example of a pedagogic reallife situation that works as a tool for informal education (Fjellstrom, 2004, p. 163). It is this notion that is also being carried forward in the school restaurant at Peartree Academy, or at least this was one of the aims of the school. Observations, interviews, and focus group interviews were conducted in three schools in central Sweden to explore how the pedagogic meal is practiced with a focus on teachers’ interaction with the children (Osowski et al., 2013). There were three types of teachers identified: (1) the sociable teacher, (2) the educational teacher, and (3) the evasive teacher. The sociable teacher created a social occasion during school lunchtime, which involved having a high level of interaction with children. The only difference between the teacher-sociable role and child-sociable role was that the teacher took an interest in the children, giving them attention and fostering social learning. The educating teacher took the role of providing information during

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lunchtime, which was a one-way teacher-to-pupil approach, applying rules and procedures. The evasive teacher took a passive approach, limiting interaction with children and not fully applying rules and procedures. According to the National Food Administration (NFA), as discussed by Filho and Kovaleva (2014), in Sweden the aims of pedagogic meals are to give children and teachers a chance to interact and speak with each other while eating together and to educate children about food and healthy eating (Osowski et al., 2013, p. 420). Teachers are viewed as role models and the NFA suggests that teachers speak positively about the school meal while teaching children about the importance of eating school meals. The Swedish NFA guidelines state that an adult presence brings calm to the school meal environment. The design of the school building is crucial in facilitating the day-to-day practices of school life and social interactions (Darian-Smith & Willis, 2016). School interventions can play an influential role in helping pupils to develop social skills, as discussed by Durlak and Weissberg (2007). In their study, Durlak and Weissberg (2007) carried out an after-school program in the United States in an attempt to promote personal and social skills development during mealtime. After-school programs were defined as interventions that were available for children aged 5–18 years. Personal and social skills included problem solving, conflict resolution, self-control, leadership, responsible decision-making, and enhancement of self-efficacy and selfesteem (Durlak & Weissberg, 2007, p. 4). Outcomes in three general areas were examined: (1) feelings and attitudes, (2) indicators of behavioral adjustment, and (3) school performance. Results showed that young people who participated in these programs improved significantly in the three areas. For Durlak and Weissberg (2007), it was possible to identify with these as effective programs. The role of school food was considered in connection with pedagogy during school mealtime (Andersen, 2015). Findings from the OPUS school meal project found that staff had a significant impact during mealtime with regard to their role in both the school kitchen and as a useful resource during mealtime. The lack of knowledge in terms of how to handle and prepare a basic meal restricted them from taking advantage, however. This led to a missed opportunity for a pedagogical activity that could have been carried out during mealtime, which could become a formal learning task on food education. Table 11.1 lists the results and key findings of the study carried out on school food (Lalli, 2017b).

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194 Table 11.1 Design and school food reform. Results Reform

Design of the school dining hall

Training opportunities for teachers

Impact

Allows pupils to potentially engage and spend time eating and socializing with peers. It allows pupils to engage with teachers and peers in order to develop models of appropriate behavior. To develop opportunities to Allows teachers to think about engage with critical debates on how to take up opportunities to engage with pupils, and the the impact of socialization space acts as a breakout forum during school mealtime for for engaging with pupils. teachers.

To think about the layout of the school dining hall as well as aesthetics in creating a space. This is conducive for both food consumption and socialization.

11.5 Conclusion To return to the question posed in the introduction, a carefully thought-out design of a school space can help foster opportunities for socialization. Alongside the visual displays posted in the school dining hall, a space that is open, airy, and embedded into the heart of the school can harness fruitful and lasting relationships between pupils and teachers as well as pupils and pupils. However, spaces in schools have become limited and for this reason, architecture and construction of such spaces need to be given much more consideration. Pressures on schools to manage behavior mean that such spaces are being used to take the burden off teachers, leaving limited space for school dining areas. Further works on school dining spaces are needed, based on the potential benefits they can bring. Equally, further thinking on the design of the areas dedicated to meals in schools has been much debated in the past, and today we are beginning to see examples of how effective such spaces can be in helping schools to engage with the space. Clearly, further research on the design aspect of school buildings would help to reveal implications and benefits of investment in this space.

References Andersen, S. S. (2015). School meals in children’s social life: A study of contrasting meal arrangements. PhD Thesis University of Copenhagen.

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Anderson, M. L., Gallagher, J., & Ramirez Ritchie, E. (2018). School meal quality and academic performance. Journal of Public Economics, 168, 81–93. Atkinson, P., & Hammersley, M. (2007). Ethnography: Principles in practice. London: Routledge. Ball, S. J. (1981). Beachside comprehensive: A case-study of secondary schooling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barnard, H. (1850). School architecture or contributions to the improvement of school-houses in the United States. New York: Barnes and Co. Burgess, R. (1983). A study of bishop McGregor school—Experiencing comprehensive education. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd. Darian-Smith, K., & Willis, J. (2016). Designing schools: Space, place and pedagogy. London: Routledge. Donovan, J. J. (Ed.). (1921). School architecture: Principles and practices. New York: Macmillan. Durlak, J. A., & Weissberg, R. P. (2007). The impact of after-school programs that promote personal and social skills. Chicago, IL: Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. Eliassen, R. K. (2011). The impact of teachers and families on young children’s eating behaviors. Young Children, 66(2), 84–89. Filho, W. L., & Kovaleva, M. (2014). Food waste and sustainable food waste management in the Baltic Sea region. London: Springer. Fjellstrom, C. (2004). Mealtime and meal patterns from a cultural perspective. Scandinavian Journal of Nutrition, 48(4), 161–164. Golley, R., Baines, E., Bassett, P., Wood, L., Pearce, J., & Nelson, M. (2010). School lunch and learning behavior in primary schools: An intervention study. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 64(11), 1280–1288. Hammersley, M. (2013). What’s wrong with ethnography?. London: Routledge. Hughes, H., Franz, J., & Willis, J. (2019). School spaces for student wellbeing and learning. New York: Springer. Janhonen, K., Benn, J., Fjellstrom, C., Makela, J., & Palojoki, P. (2013). Company and meal choices considered by Nordic adolescents. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 37(6), 587–595. Lalli, G. (2017a). The restaurant: A social learning space?. PhD Thesis University of Leicester. Lalli, G. (2017b). Commensality and the school restaurant. British Education Studies Association: Educational Futures, 2(8), 69–88. Lalli, G. (2019). School mealtime and social learning in England. Cambridge Journal of Education, 50(1), 57–75. Mavrovounioti, T. (2010). Democratic education in Sweden. MA thesis Sweden: Lund University. Nasirian, Y. (2013). How children in Cape Verde experience school meals: An ethnographic study. In Food service management Report VT12–71. Retrieved from https://gupea.ub.gu. se/bitstream/2077/33092/1/gupea_2077_33092_1.pdf. Nicholson, E. (2005). The school building as third teacher. In M. Dudek (Ed.), Children’s Spaces (pp. 44–65). London: Routledge (2006) (Chapter 4). Osowski, C. P., Goranzon, H., & Fjellstrom, C. (2013). Teachers’ interaction with children in the school meal situation: The example of pedagogic meals in Sweden. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 45(5), 420–427. Otto, K. (1963). School building 1: Examples and development in primary and secondary school buildings. London: Iliffe books. Pike, J. (2010). An ethnographic study of lunchtime experiences in primary school dining rooms. PhD Thesis Hull, UK: University of Hull.

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Pike, J., & Leahy, D. (2012). School food and pedagogies of parenting. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 52(3), 435–459. Robson, E. R. (1874). School architecture, being practical remarks on the planning, designing, building and furnishing of school-houses. London: John Murray. Sepp, H., Abrahamsson, L., & Fjellstrom, C. (2006). Pre-school staffs attitudes toward foods in relation to the pedagogic meal. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 30(2), 224–232.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Empathy, food systems and design thinking for fostering youth agency in sustainability: A new pedagogical model Allievi Francescaa,b, Sonia Massaric,e, Recanati Francescab, and Dentoni Domenicod a

JAMK University of Applied Sciences, Jyv€askyl€a, Finland Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition, Parma, Italy c Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy d Montpellier Business School, Montpellier Research in Management, Montpellier, France e ISIA Rome Design, Rome, Italy b

12.1 Introduction Now, more than ever, society is overwhelmed by challenges such as climate change and increasing food inequalities. In light of the events in 2020, it becomes even more urgent to focus on the transition to a more sustainable society. This calls for an approach that is both systemic and interdisciplinary to ensure that, according to the core aim of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN, 2015), “no one is left behind.” Youth education needs to contribute to this aim by re-framing curricula, integrating sustainability into its practices, and guiding young people in understanding the complexity of sustainability. In this context, food sustainability issues make an ideal starting point, being characterized by a variety of often-conflicting dimensions, stakeholders, perspectives, relationships, and values. Food sustainability and sustainable food systems are complex. This makes the grand challenges afflicting global food and agriculture inextricably difficult to address (Dentoni, Waddell, & Waddock, 2017). The complexity of food sustainability has three important facets (Dentoni, Pinkse, & Lubberink, 2020), as discussed in the following sections. Interconnectedness. We, humans as organisms among many others in nature including those (plants and, for some of us, animals) that become Transdisciplinary Case Studies on Design for Food and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817821-8.00014-X

Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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our food, are all interconnected yet independent from each other. While we might have a relative freedom to choose our actions and interactions, their effects will have direct or indirect consequences on all the other organisms. Emergence. Systems, including food systems, are emergent. Any actions that we take, or any interaction we have with other people or organisms, may change the system. This gives us the agency of making meaningful and purposive everyday choices to support food sustainability or at least avoid negative consequences for the food system. Modularity. We, as humans, are densely connected in smaller subgroups (e.g., within families, organizations, communities, cultures, scientific disciplines, or spiritual beliefs). However, we are also profoundly disconnected across subgroups (e.g., across families, organizations, communities, cultures, scientific disciplines, or spiritual beliefs). This means that, in relation to food sustainability, many subgroups hold clashing views and beliefs on how to achieve global food sustainability, what is “sustainable” or not, and more fundamentally, our common values. People working and communicating about food sustainability should be deeply aware of these characteristics (Waddock, Meszoely, Waddell, & Dentoni, 2015). This would help weighting more the importance of our everyday actions and interactions, and prioritize those that could make, through relatively small steps, a remarkable change in the systems that we inhabit. Therefore, these complex features of food sustainability make it challenging, but also possible, for any of us to make systemic changes in our food systems. With this premise in mind, the authors argue that the full understanding of the complexity of food sustainability, and the consequent actions toward it, will be possible when sustainability becomes a “perceived human value” (Massari, 2020). Such process can be enacted only with the contribution of educational methods and approaches that support young people in seeing their personal challenges, and those of the “others” acting on mechanisms of both self-empathy and altruism (Massari, Allievi, & Recanati, 2021; Steffen et al., 2015). This chapter addresses the following core research questions: 1. Is it possible to analyze and model actions based on empathy to generate innovative, creative intuitions and thus foster the understanding of complex food systems’ management and development? 2. How can the younger generation be guided in recognizing problems and transforming them into opportunities? In addition, how can design thinking (DT) be used to foster creativity in younger generations who

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want to tackle complex food sustainability challenges and become change-makers? 3. Finally, how can we foster a creative and systemic approach in the younger generations in order to achieve the SDGs? The case studies presented offer inspiration on how systemic and empathic mechanisms can be fostered through teaching of the complexity of food sustainability to youth. They also offer a starting point for a set of guidelines on how education can support such systemic changes and more sustainable social actions from youth.

12.2 From 2015 to 2020: Young people tackling food sustainability complexity The Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition Foundation (BCFN) has focused on the global paradoxes of food systems since 2009, and has always paid attention to the role of youth in addressing the current issues of food systems. It has also promoted various activities targeted at young researchers and students, including competitions, workshops, and online events, and supported each of the three case studies presented in this chapter. The first case study is a DT workshop named Youth Manifesto (YM), launched and developed in 2015. YM was characterized by four creative and collaborative design thinking sessions, to which 85 international students and researchers younger than 30 years and from different academic backgrounds participated. The aim of the YM was to impact world leaders as well as encourage responsibility from today’s younger generation, who will be shaping tomorrow’s society. The second case study is the Youth Partnerships for the SDGs, a creative DT workshop that was held during the BCFN 8th International Forum on Food and Nutrition in 2017. The aim of this event was to have youth (younger than 35 years) meet representatives from public institutions, policy makers, and academia to put proposals into practice toward the implementation of the SDGs by 2030. In this setting, young leaders from key networks and organizations dealing with sustainability and youth action were involved in the creation of a partnership, joining forces toward the achievement of the SDGs. The third case study is based on the use of the Food Sustainability Index (FSI) educational toolkit in higher education. This toolkit, named FSI Edu, provides two workshops and at the moment of this publication, has been used for teaching activities with about 600 students from all over the world.

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It has proven to be useful both in supporting the acquisition of knowledge on the complexity of food sustainability and in fostering empathy, thus opening up the possibility to generate alternative and sustainable solutions for the current global societal challenges. The chapter presents the specific experiment (taking place in 2020) of one of the FSI Edu workshops in an international parallel DT teaching session with university students in Italy at ISIA Design School, Systems Design Department, master’s-level course on “Sociology of Change”. All students were aged between 20 and 25 years old. The aim of this experiment was to help students identify creative actions contributing to healthy and sustainable innovation around complex issues such food sustainability as well as those dealing with economic, social, and environmental development.

12.3 Theoretical framework: The importance of empathy and design thinking in food sustainability teaching 12.3.1 Human survival, planetary boundaries and the need for empathy Now, more than ever, humanity is facing questions related to its survival while recognizing that other forms of life will continue existing beyond the existence of humans. The limits set by natural resources force humans to ask themselves how such resources should be used in order to grant survival for the future generations. Humans are almost insignificant in terms of global biomass, as the share of human biomass is equal to only 0.01% of the total. Plants, bacteria, and animals (mushrooms, insects, and fish included) make up 82%, 13%, and 5%, respectively (Bar-On, Phillips, & Milo, 2018). However, humans affect natural resources the most, especially in the last 100 years. The technological evolution has progressed beyond the question of how the available land, water, and ecosystem services should be used.

12.3.2 Empathy and sustainability Considering the relatively short existence of the human species (approximately 200,000 years; Galfard, 2016), some neuroscientists and psychologists have focused their research efforts on understanding how our sense of altruism and empathy has developed. For example, Tomasello (2009) investigated the mechanisms allowing such development in humans within

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this relatively short time, focusing on the role of the so-called ratchet effect, linked with culture and knowledge transfer, which is possible only through empathy. In addition, Rifkin (2009) and De Waal (2010) refuse to see selfishness and aggressiveness as core characteristics of human nature. Instead, they point out how innate empathy, or the sense of altruism, is. However, in today’s often purely economic-driven logics, empathy may need to be reeducated, being essential for society to evolve toward a more sustainable direction. Empathy is also one of the key skills for working life (WEF, 2019). Furthermore, previous research highlighted the importance of the link between empathy and environmental protection (e.g., Ericson, Kjønstad, & Barstad, 2014), which could be fostered both at the individual and policy-making level. Sustainability and food sustainability issues in particular are gaining popularity in institutions of higher education both in terms of curricula contents and nonformal education projects. However, a mismatch persists between the rising interest and the scarce implementation of food sustainability in educational plans of various disciplines. This results from regulatory and/ or institutional barriers (including excessive bureaucracy, competition, and lack of support for interdisciplinary projects) as well as still-too-little pressure from civil society to make change (Kioupi & Voulvoulis, 2019). For society to work collectively toward the achievement of SDGs, curricula in higher education need to include a systemic approach to sustainability and promote the interdisciplinary integration of sustainability in all practices of the institution (Blanco-Portela, Benayas, Pertierra, & Lozano, 2017).

12.3.3 Empathy to teach the complexity of sustainability Previous studies have shown how empathy fosters awareness of the local and global needs of others, and thus enhances the understanding of environmental knowledge and sustainability (Brown et al., 2019; Guergachi, Ngenyama, Magness, & Hakim, 2010; Jensen, 2016; Owoimaha-Church, 2017). More investigation is needed in order to understand how such process can be supported in students to reduce the knowledge-action gap often linked with sustainability and sustainable behaviors (Barth, Fischer, Michelsen, Nemnich, & Rode, 2012; Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002). For example, Jensen (2016) and Owoimaha-Church (2017) highlighted the positive role of imagination and role-playing in teaching methods to foster empathy and in turn the application of sustainability. Through the

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experience of empathy, individuals can create relationships with each other, with the environment, and with the surrounding community, with the potential to generate policies to account for environmental harm (Brown et al., 2019). Nevertheless, for doing so, a cultural shift is needed in educational institutions (Kioupi & Voulvoulis, 2019).

12.3.4 Design thinking to support the application of empathy and systemic approach Creativity is an important characteristic that allows one to imagine new solutions, but it is not sufficient in itself to produce innovation. Instead, it serves as a necessary stimulus for initiating complex processes involving different actors and nonlinear paths that support the process needed for an idea to become an innovation. In today’s society, innovation must involve all sectors with a systemic approach. The term innovation has different definitions, from the noted OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) definition that considers every type of improvement on a product or service as an innovation to that of Prof. John Kao who defines innovation as the capacity to always guarantee the future (Kao, 1996). Design unites all these points under a single concept: innovation is the capacity to adapt to changes and is a fundamental tool that can achieve transformation over time. With this in mind, DT can be a lever to enable social change and involve all actors from researchers to citizens, entrepreneurs to activists, and journalists to farmers. It is recognized that “successful behavior change requires a systemic approach that goes beyond persuading or ‘nudging’ individuals to change their behavior, to include government policies and practices, new and different business practices, and civil society initiatives working in synergy to facilitate the desired behavior change” (Dibb & Fitzpatrick, 2014). Through empathy, DT taps into the experiences and processes of people in the real world and aims at tackling our modern challenges. The empathic process of design needs to be implemented so that most people can benefit from it with a long-term and positive impact. In this sense, Tim Brown, CEO of global design company IDEO (IDEO, 2020), describes the inclusion of empathy in design as both a mindset and an added cultural value for designers to be able to develop concepts, products, services, strategies, and innovative systems that respond to real users’ needs. The definition of empathy is also closely linked with the concept of transdisciplinarity. This word was first introduced by Jean Piaget in 1972 (Piaget, 1972). In his work, Piaget defined transdisciplinarity as that approach

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“which should not be limited to recognizing interactions or reciprocity through specialized research, but which will have to identify those connections within a total system without any stable boundaries the disciplines themselves.” Such definition implies that we are looking at a new intellectual, cultural, and operational approach to build a better reality for future generations. Thus, it is neither a “discourse over other discourses” nor a new science to be an epistemology of disciplines as we know them. DT is always a transdisciplinary method. Design approaches are always guided by empathy. This is important to tackle global challenges such as education, healthcare, and organizational efficiency, but more than anything else, those related to the complexity of food sustainability. Because of its inherent focus on empathy and transdisciplinarity (Brown et al., 2019), DT has remarkable potential in developing systems-thinking competencies both through formal and nonformal education (Wesselink, Blok, van Leur, Lans, & Dentoni, 2015). Systems-thinking competencies, or the ability to understand and act upon the complexity of systems such as food systems, cannot be developed just as a theoretical exercise, without a deep engagement with practice (Dentoni & Bitzer, 2015; Wesselink et al., 2015). Therefore, DT supports systemic change toward food sustainability through two powerful mechanisms, as discussed in the following sections. Mechanism 1: Design-thinking ! Empathy ! Systems-thinking competencies ! Systemic change toward food sustainability. As discussed, DT processes start from a deep exploration into what others feel and need; others may include both humans and other natural organisms in our system. This process of “putting ourselves fully into someone else’ shoes,” both rationally and emotionally, represents the core of empathy. Therefore, when stimulating empathy, education activities develop in participants a strong sense of how others may think and feel differently from us (modularity), and how our actions may indirectly, but very tangibly, affect others (interconnectedness). These meaningful everyday actions driven by empathy have potential to evolve systems (emergence), through powerful ripple effects, toward a shared food sustainability vision. Mechanism 2: Design-thinking ! Transdisciplinarity ! Systems-thinking competencies ! Systemic change toward food sustainability. After ideation, DT processes involve connecting, as in a puzzle, several pieces of knowledge, expertise, and experience from multiple people and subgroups. This process of bridging scientific and popular knowledge, accomplished through collective actions and interactions in education, indeed

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represents the essence of transdisciplinarity. Therefore, when stimulating transdisciplinarity, education activities develop participants’ ability to bridge elements of their knowledge with those pertaining to other families, organizations, communities, cultures, scientific disciplines, or spiritual beliefs (modularity). By building collectively a richer “knowledge puzzle,” participants inherently become more aware of how their actions and interactions relate to the broader systems that they are part of (interconnectedness). By doing so, transdisciplinarity approaches help them to become more purposive on how their everyday actions (emergence) can make a real difference toward a shared vision of food sustainability. The theoretical background presented contributes to building the case for a new pedagogical model; by focusing on transdisciplinarity and empathy, a more sustainable food system could be created systemically in the next decades. This could include the use of DT methods combined with three specific levels of empathy: the self, who needs to recognize itself as part of a system; empathy to see what the same system looks like for others; and finally, empathy to develop co-constructive empathic processes and generate change. Such a model, named EOE (after the three levels of egocentric empathy, other-centric empathy, and eco-centric empathy) and presented in Massari et al. (2021), allows for moving from acquiring knowledge to cooperation and building meaning, as well as progression toward a systemic change of the food system. In the following sections, we test the EOE model through three case studies and make recommendations for higher education.

12.4 Case studies This section presents the three case studies developed in the timeframe 2015–19, on which the final recommendations are based.

12.4.1 First case study: Creating a Youth Manifesto for food sustainability The Milan Protocol (BCFN, 2014) aimed at raising awareness of the need to improve the sustainability of the food system among governments, institutions, and civil society. It also contributed to the development of effective, international policies in the field of food sustainability (Massari & Allievi, 2016). Previously, the Young Earth Solutions (YES!) (BCFN, 2012) was launched, calling for young (younger than 30 years) students and researchers

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from across the globe to submit their food sustainability ideas. A few years later, in 2015, all the finalists from the previous four editions of the competition, including that of 2015 (hereafter referred to as BCFN Alumni), were gathered in an interactive DT workshop in Parma, Italy. With the help of 10 mentors, they were guided to imagine their future selves in the roles of policy makers, researchers, farmers, food managers, educators, activists, and journalists. The final aim was to develop the Youth Manifesto (YM), a document to communicate the cooperative commitments that this group of international youth envisioned to fix the problems of the global food system (Massari, 2016). Before the creative process started, seven speakers (actual farmers, policy makers, etc.) shared their expertise and knowledge with all the BCFN Alumni, showing opportunities and challenges. This was followed by four sessions carried out using DT methods around the four core issues already highlighted by the Milan Protocol: hunger, obesity and healthy lifestyle, sustainable agriculture, and food waste. The first session, focused on scenario-based design, saw the YM participants guided by mentors in developing and assessing the solutions emerging from the ideas discussed. This was followed by an envisioning creative session in which the participants were divided into seven different roles (Fig. 12.1): Policy maker, Researcher, Farmer, Food Business Manager, Educator, Nongovernmental Organization/Activist, and Journalist/Media. Role-play was used to collect different perspectives, and mentors participated in the co-design activities. The third session focused on the four Milan Protocol issues of hunger, obesity and healthy lifestyles, sustainable agriculture, and food waste, and two focus groups were created for each theme. In addition, some key speakers presented their knowledge on these themes. The YM participants (from the point of view of their roles) reflected on the strengths and weaknesses of existing solutions and used creativity to develop new, innovative approaches. In the final convergent design session, all the BCFN Alumni gathered with their original group (for example the Farmers) and reported the results of the thematic discussions; in conclusion, three ideas and concepts were finalized, selected, and graphically designed by each team. A summary of the ideas was included in the final YM document (BCFN, 2015), which includes seven operational commitments to tackle food paradoxes in the key roles of policy maker, farmer, activist, educator, food manager, journalist, and researcher. These were also presented to the Italian Agriculture minister in 2015 as well as to the European institutions (Massari, 2016).

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Fig. 12.1 Shots from the YM creative sessions. (Credit: pictures by the Authors.)

12.4.2 Second case study: Youth Partnership for the SDGs workshop During the BCFN International Forum on Food and Nutrition in 2017, 45 young representatives of organizations involved with youth and/or sustainability (including the BCFN Alumni, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Universities Fighting World Hunger Youth, and the European Association of Agricultural Economists), participated in a DT workshop focused on developing concrete actions to achieve the SDGs. Six SDGs were selected, and following a 2-4-8 DT discussion method, the participants worked in pairs for 10 minutes on developing one idea for each SDG assigned to that pair. Pairs were then merged into groups of four or five people (due to the odd number of participants) and were given 10 minutes to select two of their ideas, one for each of the assigned SDGs. Finally, the moderator merged everyone into the same group, giving another 15 minutes to work on selecting the two final ideas, one for each assigned SDG (Fig. 12.2). The selected ideas were also presented to the audience of the Forum in a dedicated session to youth initiatives and actions.

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Fig. 12.2 Discussion of ideas in group and final selection of ideas. (Credit: pictures by the Authors.)

The feedback from the participants was incredibly positive and highlighted the importance of creating partnerships to achieve the SDGs. They also pointed out the unique possibility to integrate previously acquired knowledge and apply it in the context of an international experience that gave them valuable information they could share with their organizations. Furthermore, they described this workshop as inspiring, expressing gratitude for the meaningful interaction with like-minded individuals from different cultural backgrounds, and pointing out the will to engage in similar experiences in the future. They highlighted how the workshop helped them to understand themselves better, their challenges, and their community of origin. Some also mentioned a greater understanding of their role and responsibility toward the future of the food system.

12.4.3 Third case study: The food sustainability index as an educational tool The FSI, developed by the BCFN Foundation and The Economist Intelligence Unit, offers a measure of the national sustainability of food systems of 67 countries (2018 edition). The analysis is performed across three categories of food loss and waste, sustainable agriculture, and nutritional challenges, and on the weighted sum of 89 individual (quantitative and qualitative) metrics (BCFN and EIU, 2018). Using the FSI as its main source of data, the FSI Edu project was developed to use the FSI as a tool to support the teaching of the complexity of food sustainability and the link with SDGs in higher education courses. The FSI Edu educational module is comprised of an introduction on

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FSI and its methodology, two workshops, and a questionnaire to assess students’ knowledge of food sustainability. Among its pedagogical aims are to develop students’ systems thinking and foster empathic mechanisms. The expected learning outcomes include the understanding of the complexity of food sustainability and of the role of food in the achievement of all SDGs. The focus in this chapter is on the use of one of the two workshops available in the FSI Edu module and on its application in creative educational environment used to carry out the courses’ assignments, in order to assess the activation of empathic mechanisms. This workshop, called “Being a Food System Agent,” dealt with different agents in the food system. It aims to provide students with different perspectives on the food system through a role-playing game in which each group of students is given the profile of one specific agent (e.g., farmer, policy maker, or nutritionist). For 30 minutes, groups of students from the “Sociology of Change” course at ISIA Design School (Italy) identified the priorities and visions of their assigned agent, and translated them into a weight in the FSI set of indicators (greater weights were given to indicators considered more important). After this first phase, each group presented their choices and reasons to the others. Following the FSI Edu module, students carried out a creative video assignment (Fig. 12.3) elaborating on the role of food in climate change and sustainability in Europe. The feedback students gave to the workshop “Being a Food System Agent” pointed out how the connection between theory and real life was easier thanks to the empathic exercise. Students also confirmed that they had never viewed food sustainability from different angles and this workshop helped them to give new meaning to their food and daily food choices.

12.5 Analysis of the three case studies through the empathy model: EOE The testing of the EOE through the analysis and comparison of the three case studies clarifies how DT triggered and fostered its three levels of empathy: egocentric, other-centric, and eco-centric empathy. In the case of the YM, empathy was used as a base to build commitment and support participants in envisioning the future. In this case, empathy corresponded to the egocentric level while DT was used to help the participants

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Fig. 12.3 Outputs of final project delivered as short videos. (Credit: pictures by the Authors.)

understand their potential role in the future. During the discussion and cooperation activities of the group sessions, each individual reflected on him/herself, as a future professional, in relation with the others; this activated the other-centric level of empathy. Finally, the writing of the YM activated the eco-centric level of empathy. The creative, co-participated, critical, and empathic process used for the development of YM showed how DT can be used to help individuals of any background and any level of knowledge of food sustainability to understand his/her role in the food system. It also strengthened awareness and sense of responsibility, both in the present and future, possibly supporting more sustainable actions by the individuals who participated.

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In the case of the Youth Partnership for the SDGs workshop, DT and empathy were used to create partnerships and thus help participants to see the potential of effective cooperation. In this workshop, the first level of empathy (eco-centric) was activated when each participant felt him/herself as a representative of his/her organization (e.g., BCFN Alumni) and asked him/herself questions such as “who am I representing? What can I do with my affiliation?” After this step, the collaborative sessions supported the other-centric level of empathy, on which the teamwork was built through questions such as “what can I give to others, through my organization? Who am I in the organization which I represent here? How can I best represent our mission and vision and create solid partnerships with the others?” Finally, the participants worked with a transdisciplinary approach, using their affiliations and expertise in a creative way to generate ideas for innovative partnerships that aim at achieving SDGs, thus activating the eco-centric level of the EOE model. In this case, the empathic mechanisms resulted not only in teaching a systemic approach to the participants, but also in the creation of partnerships that deepened after the workshop was over. In the case of the FSI Edu workshop, the DT approach was applied in the “Being a Food System Agent Workshop” and empathy was used to create inspiration to get new ideas. By combining DT techniques with the FSI Edu workshop, it was possible to activate the three levels of the EOE model. For the egocentric level, students compared their personal priorities with those of other professional profiles or lifestyles. The personal analysis was a fundamental step in building a personal definition of sustainability based on each student’s personal life. For the other-centric level, students had to discuss first with the rest of their group, and then with all the other food system agents included in the role-playing. Such discussion aimed at giving everyone a greater awareness of the complexity of food sustainability, which should account perspectives and needs of all stakeholders involved. The workshop “Being a Food System Agent” activated systemic and crosscultural reflections, thus accelerating the empathic process of understanding the food system and its connections with the SDGs. This kind of empathy, defined as eco-centric, has a wider scope, being targeted at the planet and humanity at large. For the eco-centric level, students had to use the knowledge and competences gained during the previous two phases of the workshop to generate new ideas and present them in a video. The first part was the video explaining their vision of sustainability, as a way to share their view and inform others about the situation of natural resources on our planet,

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whereas the second part presented the design of solutions for more sustainable scenarios. The analysis and comparison of the three case studies (workshops) through the lens of the EOE model clarifies how DT triggered and fostered its three levels of empathy; the activated empathic process went from education to engagement and action in the youth involved. The EOE model guides and supports the analysis and the actions to generate innovative and creative intuitions and thus foster the understanding of complex food systems’ management and development. This allows youth to become aware and express their agency toward food sustainability issues as consumers, professionals, and citizens (Fig. 12.4). There are three fundamental steps (Fig. 12.5) in all the workshops included in the case studies. First, is an introspective phase with a hyperlocal approach starting from the analysis of one’s personal experiences, values, and ideas (this immersion is fundamental to activate the engagement of young people). Second, is an interactive phase focused on the interaction and cooperation with peers, thus including the analysis of different perspectives and backgrounds with a trans-cultural and transdisciplinary approach (young people are managing to gain more control over their lives, either by themselves or with the help of others). Third, is a community phase in which young people were asked to develop solutions and creative ideas for communities and scenarios that were not directly connected with the participants, thus fostering systems-thinking (envisioning new opportunities). Fig. 12.5 summarizes the process described for the three case studies. In summary, all the cases presented try to eliminate the paradigm of competition that characterizes the current learning system. Instead, through empathic mechanisms, more collaborative learning systems were activated

Fig. 12.4 Food sustainability complexity: from education to engagement to action. (Credit: Sonia Massari.)

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Fig. 12.5 Process of engagement, empowerment, and envisioning linked with the EOE model. (Credit: Sonia Massari.)

based on a greater knowledge of ourselves, of others, and of the planet. The three cases well represent an ideal learning system in which personal challenges go to support global and planet challenges. To foster youth agency in food sustainability, it is important to learn from others and to understand the complexity of the food system without forgetting the role of the individual and his/her role within the system.

12.6 Discussion and conclusions The first International Day of Education (declared by the United Nations in January 2020) occurred at the same time as the UN Decade of Action for an even more urgent action from all sectors toward the required transformations for a more sustainable world. Furthermore, 2020 has also been characterized by the global COVID-2019 pandemic, which has highlighted the various degrees of unsustainability of the social and economic systems in place. Education, in particular, has had to reinvent itself in most cases, moving to distance learning and online teaching, and venturing into new learning spaces. This chapter described how both empathy and transdisciplinarity contribute to guiding students in acquiring wider knowledge and perspectives, moving from the separateness of modularity through interconnectedness, and translating these into an emergence of everyday actions that contribute to systemic change toward a more sustainable food system. In the same way that diverse topics and their interconnections are handled, personal competences can also be integrated. By using a combination of DT and the three levels of the EOE model, a new pedagogical model for food sustainability

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can support the handling of the complexity of food sustainability, thus educating problem-solvers who practice their agency in a systemic and transdisciplinary way. The first research question aimed at investigating the possibility to model actions based on empathy to foster understanding of food sustainability complexity; this is addressed in Fig. 12.4, which represents the process from the understanding of food sustainability complexity through learning and to action. As openly stated in target 4.7 of SDG 4, it should be ensured that “all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promoting of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and culture’s contribution to sustainable development.” To address the second question of how creativity can support youth who want to tackle complex food sustainability challenges, three fundamental steps (Fig. 12.5) can be identified in all the creative sessions included in the case studies. These steps can be enhanced and improved by applying the empathic mechanisms supported by the EOE model, as shown in the case studies described in this chapter. Based on these steps, the authors give three recommendations for those involved with teaching food sustainability, who should use creativity to: – engage youth: as stated in the theme of the UN International Youth Day 2018, safe physical and virtual spaces are needed to allow young people to move around and express themselves freely, making them a fundamental requirement for new generations to be actively involved in sustainable development and social cohesion processes; education should allow, support, and foster such spaces, using creativity to explore them and harness their potential; – empower youth: creativity should be used to support young people in developing empathy and respect for others, no matter their status, gender, or ethnicity; education should use creativity instrumentally to allow also being at service of the community surrounding the institutions where it takes place; – help youth to envision a proactive future: the transformation of global commitments into local actions that are collective and collaborative can help to develop anticipatory behaviors, that is, behaviors that include the envisioning of the future in its decisional process (Poli, 2017), including

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opportunities and scenarios that do not exist yet. Education can guide such process, by offering perspectives, case studies, and spaces where envisioning takes place. Finally, the chapter aimed at investigating how to guide youth in developing an empathic and systemic approach to sustainability. Having a long-term vision beyond the borders of our single selves is the way to grant a collective effort toward a more sustainable society and the achievement of all SDGs; the need for empathy is now greater than ever. The evolving field of education for sustainability has to answer this need, focusing efforts on the development of soft skills and on the inclusion of all levels of empathy in its practices, methods, and policies, thus contributing to a generation of humans with sustainability as a core value. Such a systemic approach is the only way to provide answers to questions such as who decides how and what we eat, or whether healthy food choices are also healthy for those who produce the food we eat as well as for the natural resources involved. In order for a systemic approach to be activated, empathic mechanisms need to be included as a key element in sustainability education. The coupling of DT and EOE can prove to be crucial in fostering empathy in students and is the basis to develop an innovative pedagogical model, which brings out the added value of diversity of competences and perspectives. Furthermore, it was previously described how both approaches contribute to developing systemic thinking, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of the complexity of food sustainability. The evidence for a great need for qualities that involve the ability to move across disciplines with an empathic and systemic approach has become even more evident in the context of the COVID19 pandemic; higher education needs to adapt and offer students skills and tools that further enhance their resilience as learners and humans.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank the BCFN Foundation for their efforts in developing the FSI, the Youth Manifesto, and the Youth Partnership for the SDGs workshops. Special thanks to the BCFN Foundation also for the support in granting the development of the FSI Edu tool. Thanks also to the Economist Intelligence Unit for the support in developing the FSI. Additionally, they wish to thank JAMK University of Applied Sciences, ISIA Design School, and Roma Tre University for allowing the possibility to implement international and innovative teaching methods in the classrooms. Finally, they wish to thank all the participants who took part in the workshops Youth Manifesto, Youth Partnership for the SDGs, and FSI Edu and gave their valuable feedback.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Design bites—Design in Culinary Arts. The case study of the MSc in Innovation in Science and Culinary Arts Ricardo Bonacho Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies, Estoril, Portugal CIAUD—Research Centre for Architecture, Urbanism and Design, Lisbon School of Architecture, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

The plate, as a metaphor, is in the context of our study a territory without boundaries to map the relationship between design and food, through the practice of culinary arts. The plate, an object whose function is that of support and containment of food, ceases to have physical limits in its form, size, and structure. It ends up being a functional object and begins to integrate with new concepts and approaches that seek to define it as a territory where notes are taken and where doubts, certainties, gaps, and failures of a research process about design and food are clarified. A plate without shape is like a territory without boundaries. This absence is visible in the relationship that the design establishes with other areas, and the same goes for the culinary arts and gastronomy. Because it is a practical activity that lies on the frontier between art and technology, design has been expanding its borders into new territories (Leerberg, 2009). In a continuous and changing expansion, it is this intersection that interests us in the present study. Breathing and eating are essential to life. Nevertheless, without the aid of material creativity and cultural elaboration, we would be condemned to collect food directly from nature (Capella, 2013; Margolin, 2013). The relationship between design and food results from the designer’s interest in many aspects of the food culture, as well as chefs using design methodologies in their work processes (Capella, 2013). In the last 20 years, several designers have developed projects in the area of food, which, in one way or another, prove that the design/food relationship has always existed. The designer has always designed utensils around the kitchen, the table, cooking activities, and eating (Bonacho, 2019; Capella, 2013; Margolin, 2013).

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The questions of experience related to eating in our study are instruments to analyze and study. The mediatization of food, through movements such as molecular cuisine, slow food, or artisanal revivalism for the confection of local products, among others, linked to food production, made the act of eating a sensory experience, a storyteller, a privileged attribute, increasingly through memory as a sensorial organ of great importance for food. Today the act of eating works in two ways: the convenience and the speed of food, sometimes unhealthy, which allow us to nourish and the experience that can be apprehended by all the senses, evoking memories, feelings, and emotions when in contact with food. We start from the idea that food is necessary for survival, but its cultural dimension emphasizes social action. Food is a voice that communicates and, like speech, it can tell stories (Amon & Menasche, 2008). Food design, within all the definitions that may fit it, seeks to communicate the food through the senses and is concerned with the width of the food system, not just with its final result—either a dish developed with advanced cooking techniques and presented by a chef, or an industrial food product that reaches the consumer through the packaging and a long chain of production and distribution. Food Design is the domain that can manifest in all areas of practice and knowledge of design and food. It is oriented to the past because it studies and analyzes its historical dimension as a reflection of the present and for the future when dealing with innovation and food creativity. It intends for the interaction between the consumer and the food—whether it is a product, service, or experience. Food Design looks at the food system from a holistic perspective. (Bonacho, 2019: 368).

In addition to the conceptualization, our study focuses mainly on the aspects of creativity and the creative process in design, within the higher education courses of culinary arts in Portugal. The author’s teaching experience allowed the creation of a structure and a network whose main objective has been to transmit to students of gastronomy and culinary arts what design is and the advantage of being taught in these courses. Since our research is outside the professional and academic territory of design, our main objective is to transpose the creative process in design to other areas. In this case, the approach we propose stems from what, in the 1990s, Nigel Cross proposed as designerly ways. According to the author, in the last decades, we have seen a change in the focus of design research, whose basis has come to be in the understanding of the design process, through the understanding of its

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cognitive dimension: the designer’s ways of knowing and thinking (Cross, 2006). Our contribution has materialized in the development of several curricular programs based on methodologies and design processes that can present to these students (Bonacho, 2019).

13.1 Creative process model Thus, through models already implemented and tested in other contexts, we applied a creative process model in the development of food products, services, and experiences within higher education courses of culinary arts and gastronomy, focusing on aspects related to the Portuguese gastronomic identity and culture, mainly through exploitation of the Mediterranean diet and the consumption of pulses. The practical application of such research focuses mainly on the culinary arts (MSc in Innovation in Science and Culinary Arts from Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies in Portugal), but is directly related to food because it involves all the complexity of the mentioned areas and the entire food system, from farm to table. For the practical component of our research, we used the Double Diamond (2005) based on the research of Parreira (2014), and that Mitchell, Woodhouse, Heptinstall, and Camp (2013) adapted to the reality of the master’s degree course in Innovation in Science and Culinary Arts. The common objectives to all project activity, proposed during the period of our research, were based mainly on the use of materials, gestures, forms, and interactions that led the students to understand the role of food, taste, form, color, and interaction that we have with food, based on design principles, through a creative process model adapted to the reality of the culinary arts. We asked the students to develop their taste, aiming at a full experience for all the senses, with ethical, aesthetic, historical, social, and sustainable aspects. Concerns about the food system that has become increasingly urban in recent years are expressed, for example, by a trend towards urban diets that seek to mimic traditional culture—simple regional meals such as those cooked by grandparents, reflecting the consumer’s desire for a return to the past and to what is local. These concerns followed not only the kitchens of great chefs worldwide but also the teaching model of the MSc in Innovation in Science and Culinary Arts, which, in recent editions, sought to instill in students’ work the concepts of seasonality, sustainability, and food health.

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The difficulty in remaking the origins and methods of producing food available for purchase and consumption in supermarkets and restaurants is of concern to the consumer, and the desire to return to self-sufficiency or to learn to produce and grow food has evolved globally among urban consumers. In this sense, our creative process model proposes a journey from farm to table through which students come into contact with the needs of the consumer and the producer and can develop sustainable, socially relevant, and above all products that provide experiences that go beyond the physiological component. The model adopts the same structure as the Double Diamond and uses some of the tools proposed by the Design Council (2005), but came up with metaphors for the description of its phases, with the association of elements (earth, water, fire, air, and senses). Using the metaphor serves, in this context, the same purpose of the metaphor of “The Plate,” which we addressed at the beginning, as well as the adoption of a nomenclature that approximates itself to the grammar used in the culinary arts: fertilize, grow, prepare, consume, and rescue. Thus, the proposed model (Fig. 13.1), which we describe in the sections that follow, translates into a cycle of five phases, which aim to lead students to develop their project activity through critical and theoretical thinking of an interdisciplinary nature. Integration of the concepts of design, food, and culinary arts that include interdisciplinary aspects can enrich student’s practice and bring more objective, but not restrictive, criteria for the creation of food products, services, and experiences. The dialogue we propose between

Fig. 13.1 Creative process scheme adapted from double diamond. Credit: Author (Ricardo Bonacho).

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phases, as well as its cyclical nature, offers students the possibility of new, more creative approaches to answer questions or solve previously determining problems that go beyond traditional nutritional concerns and techniques that we often find in their products.

13.2 1st phase—Fertilize—Earth The first phase of the process, known as Discover (Double Diamond, 2005), was named Fertilize, with the element earth associated with it in a metaphorical sense. In this phase of exploration and identification of consumer needs, the students were presented with some variables that conditioned and defined in a more accurate way the field of action of the project. It seeks to get student’s attention so that they become interested and create a starting point for a network that will grow and become involved as the project advances. We asked students to research the source of the raw materials to use, the location, the production, and their participation in the local diet, the tradition, and their culture. One of the objectives of this phase is for students to re-interpret traditional recipes in order to remember techniques and integrate them in a contemporary way in their projects. The challenge proposed to the students in all the design exercises was always based on the content taught in the food design discipline and should correspond to one of the two guidelines presented to them as alternatives and associated with a service: (1) a food product for the industry or (2) a full gastronomic experience (Bonacho, Gerardo, & Pires, 2020; Bonacho, Pires, & Viegas, 2018). We then proposed that each student should depart from the (re)formulations made and convert them into a statement of intent. They assumed the first phase as a manifesto for evolution and project development. Its designation, Fertilization, served as a prerequisite for the preparation of a territory to be cultivated and exploited. The earth element metaphor, from which the food grows, free of processing, a territory to be fertilized in order to harvest its fruit. The tools used in this phase were Service Safari, Visits (User Shadowing—adapted); Research; Brainstorming, and Idea Generation proposed by the Design Council in the Double Diamond (2005). Before proceeding with the project activity, the students should think about the foods proposed, from the artisanal and industrial point of view and from a historical and symbolic perspective that would represent the culture and society in which they are active. For example, wheat > flour > bread (a metaphor of the product we take for granted every

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day, and that is transversal to several cultures) (Montarani, 2004). The first phase also involved the question of how to develop a new product/food experience associated with a service that demystifies and encourages the consumption of pulses and provide a sensorial experience to the consumer. We do this by being based on a set of knowledge inherent in food production and by reinforcing the interdisciplinary character of design when applied in the case of food production. The issues addressed in the context of food product and experience should be related to some of the following topics: 1. Sustainability/seasonality/food waste 2. Nutritional value/food health 3. Food technic and technology 4. Sensorial experience/senses 5. Identity/culture/authenticity 6. Presentation/communication In addition, the students should consider where (food space), how (contemporary practices), and for whom (culinary world or consumer). In this case, the students had to identify the problem, opportunity, or necessity, which, in part, was already defined based on the results of the questionnaires—we implemented a survey in order to understand the knowledge and consumption of pulses in Portugal—(Bonacho, 2019), had to define the solution, and to build a knowledge base. At this stage, students used service safari (food spaces and producers) and visited the places where one can consume the hypothetical product to be developed (Fig. 13.2). In addition, they made an audio-visual record of the visits. The objective was to acquire experience since the method puts the student in direct contact with the experience, raising new questions. They also used information about those visits as a resource for their ongoing research. In this phase of information discovery, the methods used were quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (visits, research). The materials to be collected at this stage included: (1) photographic and descriptive registration (visits to supermarkets, grocery stores, restaurants, shops, local producers with interest

Fig. 13.2 Visits to local food producers and retailers. Credit: Author (Ricardo Bonacho).

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for the project); (2) visual and graphic research (by formal similarity, chromatic, identity, ingredients); and (3) ideas and concepts (outlining some ideas about the solution and defining a provisional concept of the product/food experience). Since the project was for one academic year, we evaluated in phases, each of which corresponded to the creation of a project report, in which the students kept the information so that it was always available, in case they felt the need to return to it in the following phases. As a basis of knowledge and definition (Fertilization), the students should study and review the chosen ingredients, their history, culture, society, and relationship with possible products, recipes, when they exist or when they are relevant to the project, research the ways of production (artisanal, industrial), distribution, forms and functions (immediate, symbolic and cultural), and the results of the methods involved in the fertilization phase.

13.3 2nd phase—Growth—Water At this stage, students should establish a link with the previous research (definition) and (re)create a narrative, from the farm to the plate. This reflection and research served as a support to rethink the food, in the future or the present, giving it new meanings and functions. Thus, the students should present ideas and drafts of potentials for the creation of a new product, service, or experience. According to Double Diamond (2005), the objectives of this phase are to analyze the research of the first phase and synthesize data in order to reduce the number of assumptions and set a clear briefing of what will be done in the next phase. The previous phase explored the challenge of identifying problems and opportunities; in the growth phase, the objective is to channel information into concrete ideas. The ideas generated should be analyzed and reduced to a statement of problems to be addressed. At this stage, the challenge and the problem should be as clear and objective as possible. The proposed methods were brainstorming, mind map, card sorting, and design brief (Fig. 13.3).

Fig. 13.3 Student exercises (Card Sorting; Chef’s Diary; Brainstorming; Prototypes in Plastiline). Credit: Author (Ricardo Bonacho).

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13.4 3rd phase—Prepare—Fire What local means or where things come from are issues presented to students, emphasizing the environment and how the consumer relates to it. What does it mean to live in a city, and how does it change our perception of nature? What does it mean to shape nature according to our needs? Globalization has led to production processes that are not understandable by the average consumer, generating doubts about both the foods they consume and the ingredients in the products consumed; how were they produced and by whom? In the third phase, the evolution of the design orientation focuses on the first food experiences. Here students develop a map of project evolution. The first practical configurations of the ingredient(s) allow them to create a new concept for a food product/service/experience that contains a narrative that involves the consumer. The proposed methods are prototyping (practical configurations with ingredients) and product acceptance questionnaires. These methods allow students to think of the product from two perspectives: “conceptual/artistic” and “objective/commercial.” Based on visual composition tools, students design a new way to eat, and (re) create a new function for the product itself. It is at this stage that students also involve the sensory component. Students should define how the product will be presented after the first practical settings (prototypes, experiments with food). Based on the presentation, they should build experience and concepts that reinforce the identity of the product. Each group should consider strategies for presenting the products developed, starting with the defined concept, and making the product public. In this phase, through the sensorial analysis and product acceptance questionnaires, the inclusion of the consumer makes the product complete. Here, we asked students to consider the importance of color, shape, and senses in product development. Thus, students develop a mood board (chromatic and formal panel) that allows them a new visualization of the final product, based on formal and chromatic characteristics (Fig. 13.4).

Fig. 13.4 Practical exercises from the students. Credit: Author (Ricardo Bonacho).

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13.5 4th phase—Consume—Air The human being lives in an environment that presents a wide variety of objects. Every day we touch and use these same objects that offer various functions. The world of material culture in which we live provides information about that same culture. The objects that surround us are bearers of meaning, culture, and social interaction. Food crosses the natural and cultural boundaries, making the chef a cultural agent that connects the ingredients to the consumer. Their role is to ensure that nature becomes culture and undergoes a process of socialization (Montarani, 2004). At this stage comes the last practical test of the product. Based on all research previously developed and under the prototypes carried out in the previous phase, students should develop their product in order to achieve the final phase of the project. In some situations, it is at this stage that collaboration with interdisciplinary teams for the development of communication, identity, photography, styling, and possible packaging takes place. The main objectives are to ensure the product’s launch and presentation to the consumer, solicit feedback, and share the process with the work team. A new sensorial and hedonic analysis is made. Once the product is eaten, only memories and experience remain (Fig. 13.5).

13.6 5th phase—Rescue—Senses What is waste? When does our perception of a product change, when does it become something that goes to waste? The food we throw away every day would be enough to feed the hungry world twice. Regardless, we continue to waste food. What world of abundance determines our relationship to things? How can the durability of a product be increased if the industry intentionally shortens it? The last phase of the proposed model requires that students make it a public moment, with systematic and

Fig. 13.5 Final food products/services/experiences. Portuguese Saudade; Go Beans; (Lu)guminosas and Luxies. Credit: Author (Ricardo Bonacho).

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synthetic documentation of the whole work process. Products are presented to the consumer in a real context whenever possible.

13.6.1 Food design discipline in the MSc in innovation in science and culinary arts The MSc in Innovation in Science and Culinary Arts from the Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies in Portugal offers student’s “the possibility of continuing their studies in the area of Culinary Arts and Food Innovation, focusing on the combination between the strong practical and multidisciplinary scientific components, through work methods that promote creativity and autonomy” (ESHTE, 2018). In this interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary context, the students contacted design as a discipline and tool for their project activity. The author, with a background in design, has benefited from his knowledge and professional experience to establish a beneficial relationship for the development of research and application of the concepts studied in the fields of design, food, culinary arts, and gastronomy. The projects developed by the students under our guidance began in the academic year 2012/2013, with a first project developed in partnership with a communication design studio, Flu´or Studio, in a purely exploratory framework. The procedures developed with the students in the following academic years focused on applying the model adopted in this study, which resulted in several projects with different outcomes and processes. In order to display students’ projects as practical results that generate knowledge within the research, we have adopted, in part, the methodology of two research methods in the context of design: Almendra (2010), in terms of product design, and Neves (2012), in terms of graphic design, as well as the references transmitted by FAMM (The Five Meal Model) (Gustafsson, Ostrom, Johansson, & Mossberg, 2006) and the Institute of Food Design of Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand (Mitchell et al., 2013; Woodhouse & Mitchell, 2018). Following the model proposed by Neves (2012), in establishing “a set of moments to experience the studied concepts within higher education,” in our case in culinary arts, and “to evaluate how these concepts would be reflected in the project practice” (Neves, 2012: 390), we were able to assure a partial control over the results of the concepts. According to Pedgley and Wormald (2007) cited by Neves (2012), in recent years, senior researchers in design have agreed on the basic demarcations between what is admissible and what is not admissible as research through design. The presence of reflection, analysis, and

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theorization about the design activity is dominant, as is its transparency in the methodologies adopted (Pedgley & Wormald, 2007 apud Neves, 2012: 74). According to Neves (2012), in terms of performance the difference between the teacher/researcher, or in our case student/chef/designer, and the methods used “is that the researcher performs the scientific action, gathering information that is considered as some discovery” (2012: 391). The fact that we have five editions of the master’s under study (2012/2013, 2013/2014, 2015/2016, 2016/2017, and 2017/2018) allowed us to configure several groups to analyze the application of the proposed model with different approaches. The groups of students from the 2013/2014, 2015/2016, and 2016/2017 editions were closely monitored as experimental groups, used the proposed creative process, and used design methods. In the 2017/2018 school year, the students submitted to a more controlled experience. The first proposed project exercise did not follow the tutoring provided by the food design discipline and was autonomously developed by the students, based on the knowledge acquired in the undergraduate course in Food Production and Cookery, ESHTE. The second, a more controlled design exercise, was wholly developed in the food design discipline and used the adapted creative process model and design tools. Similarly to the research by Neves (2012), the challenges presented allowed for the use of the results in this study as well as of the data obtained with the questionnaires (Bonacho, 2019). Besides the advantage of integrating the knowledge and the professional experience of the author, it established “a useful and profitable relationship in the academic context” (Neves, 2012: 391). Students should create networks of dialogue with other areas that shape and legitimize their project activity, enhancing inter and transdisciplinarity’s characteristics. The food design project will be developed within the student’s capacity to sediment a set of relationships with the technical and technological resources available in the master’s disciplines. In this perspective, we started a project activity with an ordinary object—design for food—whose conceptual nature is found and built from the vast legacy of information that revolves around the universe of design, food, culinary arts, and gastronomy, as well as its relations with other areas of knowledge. The contents presented are intended to awaken in students the need to contact, reflect on, and criticize all aspects related to the subject matter in the discipline. The nature of the discipline is mostly practical; a practice built on the theoretical foundations of food design, design, and culinary arts.

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Initially, it was envisaged to apply creativity assessment protocols based on studies of Amabile (1982), Christiaans (2002), and Horng and Lin (2009). However, we have chosen not to apply these protocols because, according to Yuan and Lee (2014), the methods used are not enough to validate creativity; and, according to Piffer (2012), these methods are unsatisfactory and cannot be considered as a complete measure to evaluate the creativity of both the process used and the final product. In the context of this study, it would be difficult to apply all protocols for several reasons: (1) the nature of projects (product, service or food experience), inter and transdisciplinary; (2) creativity, regardless of being evaluated by experts, remains subjective; (3) the different areas of expertise would generate different evaluations (design and culinary arts); and (4) the process students adopted, although controlled, had many variables that we could not address in this study. Project mentoring did not limit students in the development of their project activity but sought to ensure that all phases of the proposed model were followed, as well as the use of the proposed tools. Each contact session between the teacher and the students required clarifying the proposed phases and the tools to be used, without limiting the use of previously acquired knowledge or the contribution of the other master’s disciplines.

13.7 Conclusions All the concepts covered in our study have complex dimensions, and the same is true of creativity. Creativity and the creative process have, in design, a practical tradition that, despite their ambiguous definition, accompanies the designer’s design activity in their most diverse areas. Creativity and the creative process are well-documented aspects in the area of design. However, in the culinary arts, our field of study for the practical application of design does not happen. Although some studies refer to the paradigm shift of the pedagogical model in the culinary arts, the idea of creativity and the creative process, as some authors suggest, does not have sedimentation similar to that which design has in the design activity. In this case, some chefs often face the creative process differently, free of phases, and with their tools, which are often based on the technical and technological capacity of the ingredients they work with it. Concerning innovation, another complex concept has different parameters and definitions in the contexts that we have addressed here. The language of design is the language of innovation, and in the case of the culinary arts, the innovative product exists in three stages: exploratory, minimalist, and classic. In the exploratory plan, we find the

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work of the chef Ferran Adria`, a pioneer not only in the approach that he made to the design in his methodology of work but also in considering creativity and the creative process as essential elements in the culinary arts. When dealing with subjective concepts and complicated definitions, it is natural that the evaluation for creativity also gains this dimension. In this way, we opted to evaluate our projects subjectively and qualitatively with descriptive characteristics because, in the context of the culinary arts specifically, it would be impossible in this study to analyze and evaluate the process carefully that the students adopted. The practice of the culinary arts in Portugal is still rooted in the master– apprentice pedagogical model. In our analysis, the absence of disciplines that promote creativity and the generation of ideas, as models for the development of food products, services, and experiences, were perceptible. The reference models from other countries, which we mentioned (FAMM, Otago Food Design Institute), allowed us to become aware of the relevance and importance of our study in the context of the higher education in culinary arts in Portugal, in the specific case of the Master in Innovation in Science and Culinary Arts. As in design, food problems are “wicked/ill-defined.” In a holistic approach, no single discipline will be able to understand and create solutions to the innumerable challenges and contradictory aspects of the food system. It was in this sense that the approach of FAMM and the model already adopted by the Otago Polytechnic Institute of Food Design, concerning the teaching of creativity and design, allowed us to create a model of a creative process that makes this a holistic approach to food. All the aspects of production, confection, and consumption awaken students to the importance of critical thinking that must be transferred to all aspects of the culinary world. Today, chefs focus on creativity and innovation as differentiating factors of their work, although without a defined and conscious creative process model, at least as we conceive it in this study. The objective of the model we proposed and adopted with the students in their project activity is to raise students’ awareness of the role and function of design in the contemporary world of food culture. They need to recognize aesthetic appreciation, critical analysis, and a creative way to solve food system problems. By adding concepts of culinary arts, design, and food science, students synthesize their knowledge and skills in a way that allows them to create and develop new concepts for food products, services, and experiences. Although the proposed model was adopted only in the food design discipline, it was visible, with the results of the projects, mainly in the phases of implementation and

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validation with the consumer, that its application would be a benefit to applying transversally to this master’s course. The model we have implemented has, in a way, enabled these future professionals to explore new sources of inspiration and create new modes of expression that become relevant in the increasingly competitive market of the culinary arts. By understanding and apprehending the elements of design, innovation, and creativity, students have adopted a working method that becomes advantageous in a work environment, often under pressure to present creative products that provide consumers with food experiences.

References Almendra, R. (2010). Decision making in the conceptual phase of design processes: A descriptive study contributing to the strategic adequacy and overall quality of design outcomes. (Ph.D. dissertation unpublished) Lisbon: Lisbon School of Architecture, Universidade de Lisboa. Amabile, T. (1982). The social psychology of creativity: A consensual assessment technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43(5), 997–1013. Amon, D., & Menasche, R. (2008). Comida como narrativa da memo´ria social. Sociedade e Cultura, 11, 13–21. Bonacho, R. (2019). “Design Bites”: a pra´tica do design nas artes culina´rias. O processo criativo em design, no desenvolvimento de produtos, servic¸os e experi^encias alimentares no Mestrado em Inovac¸a˜o em Artes Culina´rias da Escola Superior de Hotelaria e Turismo do Estoril. PhD dissertation unpublished Lisbon: Lisbon School of Architecture, Universidade de Lisboa. Bonacho, R., Gerardo, A., & Pires, M. J. (2020). The experience of the natural world in a moment of fine dining—interwoven approaches to sustainability. In: Experiencing food, designing sustainable and social practices. Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on food design and Food studies (EFOOD 2019). November 28–30, 2019, Lisbon, Portugal. Londres: Taylor & Francis—CRC Press. Bonacho, R., Pires, M., & Viegas, C. (2018). “A Saudade Portuguesa”. Designing a dialogical food narrative. In Experiencing food, designing dialogues (pp. 41–45). CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781351271967-10. Capella, J. (2013). Tapas. Spanish design for food. Lunwerg Editores: Accio´n Cultural Espan˜ola. Christiaans, H. (2002). Creativity as a design criterion. Creativity Research Journal, 14(1), 41–54. Cross, N. (2006). Designerly ways of knowing. London: Springer-Verlag. Design Council (2005). The double diamond design process. http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/ designprocess [retrieved on 30 August 2018]. Escola Superior de Hotelaria e Turismo do Estoril (ESHTE), 2018. www.eshte.pt. Gustafsson, I., Ostrom, A., Johansson, J., & Mossberg, L. (2006). The five aspects meal model: A tool for developing meal services in restaurants. Journal of Foodservice, 17, 84–93. Horng, J., & Lin, L. (2009). The development of a scale for evaluating creative culinary products. Creativity Research Journal, 21(1), 54–63. Leerberg, M. (2009). Design in the expanded field: Rethinking contemporary design. Paper presented at NORDES 09: Engaging Artifacts, Oslo, Norway. Margolin, V. (2013). Design studies and food studies: Parallels and intersections. Design and Culture, 5, 375–392. Mitchell, R., Woodhouse, A., Heptinstall, T., & Camp, J. (2013). Why use design methodology in culinary arts education? Hospitality & Society, 3(3), 239–260. Montarani, M. (2004). La Comida como Cultura. Gijo´n: Ediciones Trea.

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Neves, M. (2012). Design gra´fico e o utilizado. Estrategias de interactividade e participac¸a˜o nos objetos impressos. (PhD dissertation unpublished) Lisbon: University of Lisbon, Faculty of Architecture. Parreira, S. (2014). Design-en-place—Processo de Design e Processo Criativo na Alta Cozinha. (PhD thesis unpublished) Lisbon: Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade de Lisboa. Pedgley, O., & Wormald, P. (2007). Integration of design projects within a Ph.D. Design Issues, 23(3), 70–85. Piffer, D. (2012). Can creativity be measured? An attempt to clarify the notion of creativity and general directions for future research. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 7(3), 258–264. Woodhouse, A., & Mitchell, R. (2018). Using design methodologies to problematize the dominant logic of current culinary pedagogy. EFOOD—experiencing food, designing dialogues. Routledge. Yuan, X., & Lee, J. (2014). A quantitative approach to the assessment of creativity in product design. Journal of Advanced Engineering Informatics, 28, 528–541.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Not rocket science but grandmother wisdom: Real food alternatives to oral nutrition supplements Jonathan Deutsch, Alexandra Romey, Mandee Wieand, and Benjamin Fulton Department of Food and Hospitality Management, College of Nursing and Health Professions, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, United States

Food product development is a well-recognized knowledge domain among food scientists. For example, the current examination for the Certified Food Scientist credential from the Institute of Food Technologists draws 34% of its questions from product development, along with other domains like “quality assurance and quality control, food chemistry and food analysis, regulatory, food microbiology, food safety, food engineering, and sensory evaluation and consumer testing” (Institute of Food Technologists, 2019). Food product development textbooks focus on technical considerations related to bringing a food product to market, such as food safety, shelf life, engineering, packaging, co-manufacturing, and financial, regulatory, and technical feasibility, as well as consumer insights, sensory studies, and market research (Aramouni & Deschenes, 2015; Fuller, 2016; Side, 2002). As Parasecoli (2017) points out, however, food design is broader than food product development, relying on a design thinking approach and “showing how science and innovation can generate new opportunities in all aspects of the food system” (p. 156). Broadening from a recipe- or formula-oriented approach to a more systemic design approach has been a priority for a group of progressive educators of culinary arts and science. These educators feel that the technician education implicit in much of the world’s tertiary culinary education programs produces competent cooks but falls short in producing agile problem-solvers who can enact positive change amidst a dysfunctional food system (Deutsch, 2018). In the Fall of 2016, the innovation team for a major health insurance company asked my Food Product Development class to take their course Transdisciplinary Case Studies on Design for Food and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817821-8.00007-2

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beyond the usual approach of textbook readings, exams, and a culminating applied formulation project (for example, “make a new food product that you think would sell well on a college campus”), and take a food design approach aligned with much of the work in this volume, and influenced heavily by the work of Zampollo (2016). Teams of students addressed a real world problem of significant interest to the insurance company: developing a real food alternative to oral nutrition supplements (ONS) that would not only be accepted but also chosen by the target market of seniors aged older than 80 years. This case study details the process used to develop a series of potential market-driven solutions to a pervasive and growing problem among our oldest consumers of food. The Drexel Food Lab method (Deutsch, 2016) was effective in developing consumer-aligned real food alternatives to ONS that have the potential to address the main concerns expressed by the insurer: that the alternatives will be regularly and enthusiastically consumed, that they fit into the meal patterns and foodways of the target population (seniors), and that they reduce the costs of healthcare. The solution was not a high-tech application in a new category but rather mining food traditions, being sensitive to consumer needs, and being aware of the existing opportunities in the food industry. The chapter concludes with next steps and related projects of interest.

14.1 About the course and the Drexel Food Lab The Food Product Development class engaged in this project is a required course for undergraduates (Bachelor of Science level) in two majors: Nutrition Sciences and Culinary Arts and Science. Students in these majors may go into professions such as dietitian, chef, research chef, foodservice manager, or related fields. They may also go on to graduate study. Long required, this course historically took a classroom-based lecture and lab approach. Specifically, students would read chapters from a food product development textbook, listen to an instructor lecture on the same content, take objective exams on the lecture content, and complete a term project (usually in groups) where they develop a new food product of personal or professional interest to the students such as an energy bar, smoothie, or snack food. The course description reads, “Covers the ingredients used in the development of new food products and the process of developing new food products. Objective and subjective testing procedures are demonstrated in laboratory. Students propose and carry out a food development project” (Drexel University, 2019).

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In 2016, I revamped the course to use the methods and approaches we developed in the Drexel Food Lab, with a goal of making the course more relevant to students by giving them opportunities to apply their skills to real food system problems, as Parasecoli (2017) suggests (Deutsch, 2016). The Drexel Food Lab is a Food Product Development and Culinary Innovation Lab directed by the author. Note that while we use food design principles, we do not presume to call it a food design lab. “The lab was founded in 2014 by Deutsch, along with a standout undergraduate student, Alexandra Zeitz, who went on to be the lab’s full-time manager. The lab is endowed through a transformative gift from the Octavia Foundation. The Drexel Food Lab engages students in solving real world problems in the areas of sustainability (for example, upcycling byproducts that would otherwise be wasted into new food products), health promotion (for example, developing food alternatives to drugs, the focus of this paper), and access (for example, developing appealing and healthy afterschool snacks for teens that could be purchased with public benefit cards). The underlying principles of the lab’s work are: • Do Good. Work on projects that improve the food system. • Feed Well. Make products that are tasty and desirable to consumers. • Keep Going. Develop market-driven, sustainable solutions that can stand on their own." “The lab is open to Drexel students in any program who want to learn food product development. Students and faculty can engage with the lab in a variety of ways including pursuing their own research or startup projects, as extracurricular instruction, or as paid student workers on funded projects. The Drexel Food Lab maintains a client list from startup through multinational and is funded through philanthropic support, government and foundation research grants and contracts, and industry consulting projects. The food lab generates its own published research, patents, and licensing agreements in addition to its contract work” (Drexel University, 2019). Over the years, the lab has developed a methodology for food product development, situated at the intersection of design thinking, influenced heavily by Zampollo’s (2016) work as well as the food science practicalities detailed by Aramouni and Deschenes (2015). As detailed in the case that follows, working at this intersection allows us to both creatively ideate as a designer would and practically prototype as a food scientist would. The process is as follows: 1. Establish scope and guardrails with client (before intervention) 2. Clue gathering: immersive dive into the literature, existing market products, trends, interviews with subject matter experts, tours 3. Consumer insights panels and interviews

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4. 5. 6. 7.

Data analysis: extracting clues into themes and consumer profiles Ideation Funneling and prioritization Protocepting: developing a physical and edible food item to illustrate the concept and convey the look, feel, and taste of the item 8. Participant checking protocepts with consumers 9. Refining 10. Formulation 11. Consumer sensory feedback 12. Refining and optimization 13. Final project deliverable This 13-step process varies markedly from traditional food product development, especially in academic settings, in which steps 2–9 are condensed, resulting in products that often fit the brief but lack a human-centered design approach. The method boasts two features that add further value: 1. Development is led by cross-functional teams of principal investigators, client representatives, and student interns/co-ops, merging the wisdom and knowledge of experts with the energy and curiosity of neophytes. 2. Development integrates both consumer-aligned market insights and technical R&D, separate domains for most, resulting in ideas that are not only creative but also feasible.

14.2 The case ONS represent a multibillion-dollar industry and are a fixture of healthcare, especially for seniors. Of seniors admitted for hospitalization, 39% are at risk of malnutrition (Russel & Elia, 2011), with food intake typically decreasing by 25% between the fourth and seventh decades of life (Bonnefoy, Berrut, Lesourd, et al., 2015). Physicians, often lacking training and comfort in nutrition, are apt to prescribe ONS to seniors as a “guarantee” that, despite variations in diet or appetite, the patient will be receiving the key macro- and micronutrients needed for survival (Bonnefoy et al., 2015). And it true that one can survive mainly on ONS if necessary (Allen, Methven, & Gosney, 2013). In 2016, a major private health insurer in the United States asked the Drexel Food Lab to design real food alternatives to allay the widespread prescribing of ONS. The client’s concerns were multiple:

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1. There is a very low compliance rate of ONS prescriptions; seniors are prescribed them but do not take them. For example, in one 28-day study more than 40% of the patients consumed only one-quarter of the prescribed ONS (Deutz, Matheson, Matarese, et al., 2012). 2. ONS are food, yet are sometimes paid for by public and private health insurance dollars, as they are deemed medically necessary. As they are food, not drugs, why wouldn’t patients buy this product at the supermarket using their own funds or public food assistance benefits? Studies show food would be more effective than ONS in many cases (Bonnefoy et al., 2015). 3. They are unsatisfying to patients from social and sensorial perspectives; patients simply don’t like them (Lam, Keller, Duizer, et al., 2015). The result is a system where the leading solution to the problem is unpopular, ineffective, and expensive. A trifecta of inadequacy. Can food design be used to propose a better solution? Drexel Food Lab’s approach to innovation, at the intersection of design thinking and technical food science-based product development, combines leading industry practices with our food-system sensitive model (FSSM) (O’Donnell, Deutsch, Yungmann, Zeitz, & Katz, 2015) that allows food manufacturers to leverage existing inventory and byproducts, supply chain, and manufacturing methods, allowing them to move quickly into the marketplace with minimal infrastructure hurdles. FDSC 350, the Food Product Development class at Drexel, worked through the FSSM to gather market data and consumer insights, generate ideas, develop protocepts, and gather consumer feedback for products with a high degree of acceptability as potential alternatives to ONS.

14.3 Process In this section, I briefly detail the process the class took to design the solutions.

14.3.1 Market scan We conducted a review of therapeutic foods for seniors currently on the market and performed an analysis of needs fulfilled and wanting. We then did a consumer check on perception and use of current products. The main gap was that none of the existing brands or products on the market resembled fresh food that one might eat at home or in a restaurant. They were all firmly situated in the category of “ultraprocessed.”

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14.3.2 Expert interviews The class then met with experts on aging and the food industry to ask them for their insights on the specific target market and food industry more broadly. Interviewees were a gerontologist, physician from the client side, a nutritional anthropologist, and an executive from a food industry association.

14.3.3 Literature reviews Students then explored the research literature on such topics as frailty, nutrition needs of older adults, and food composition of oral nutrition supplements. Students shared their articles via an annotated bibliography and summarized them for the class, allowing a wide body of knowledge to be quickly accessed.

14.3.4 Consumer insights Older adults, mostly aged older than 80 years, representing the target market were convened multiple times to provide insights. These were all ambulatory adults who were aging in place. They represented vibrancy of personality and were enthusiastic collaborators and co-developers with the students. After individual and group interviews, the following insights were distilled: • Cooking remains important. Despite the hassles of cooking for one or two in a small household, and lacking energy, all of the seniors considered cooking important, with restaurant dining as an alternative. Even if they knew that ONS could be a perfect nutritional replacement for a meal, it was not viewed as an acceptable alternative from a social and cultural standpoint. • Despite the preceding point, seniors are seeking convenient and tasty solutions. They limit cooking and shopping to avoid excess waste and enjoy restaurant meals where one entree can be eaten over two to three meals (for example, dinner followed by lunch the next day).

14.3.5 Interview analysis and themes From the consumer interviews, three themes emerged: 1. Freezer. The consumers love having a stockpile of food in the freezer. They avoid refrigerated foods because they live in small households and fear spoilage and waste. They are suspicious of “additives and preservatives” in shelf-stable products like ONS. They like being able to draw

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from the freezer for unexpected company or to have a complete meal without shopping. 2. Real Food. The consumers want “real food” at meals, which to them means multiple components such as bread, coffee, juice, and fruit for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and meat, starch, and vegetables for dinner. ONS is not an acceptable meal replacement unless they are in the hospital or having an acute problem keeping them from eating “real food.” Meals, for these consumers, mean meat as a main item, except for breakfast. 3. Indulgent. All of the consumers we spoke with (n ¼ 10) enjoy sweets. Cakes for breakfast, desserts with dinner, an afternoon cookie, and/or a late night bowl of ice cream are all typical.

14.3.6 Ideation Combining the preceding themes, expert interviews, and market scan, along with stimuli of other products, students were led through an ideation exercise that resulted in more than 50 ideas that could potentially be further developed.

14.3.7 Funneling These 50 ideas were then further refined, combined, workshopped, and tweaked to yield eight ideas to be protocepted in the lab: • Coffee-based beverage • Breakfast cookies • Nutritious ice cream • Portioned cake • Trail mix bread • Fortified oatmeal • Enriched quick-bread mix • Healthy sorbets

14.3.8 Consumer check The protocepts and an initial concept statement were then checked with consumers again. Consumers responded qualitatively with comments and then used a traffic-light voting system: green is a product they would love to see on the market; red means stop; and yellow means maybe with some tweaking. Table 14.1 summarizes those results. Table 14.2 provides the nutritional analysis of these products in comparison to others.

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240 Table 14.1 Pilot/initial consumer feedback. Concept Feedback

Development

High degree of acceptance/enthusiasm (n 5 10; >90% acceptance)

Brew +; fortified coffee

Breakfast cookies Ice cream

Trail mix bread

100% acceptance – Replace mid-day snack – Replace traditional coffee in AM – Could be too pricey – Not sweet enough 100% acceptance – Great breakfast idea – Agreeable macronutrient content 90% acceptance – Branded with known ice cream brand – Wants to see “Nutritious” on the label 90% acceptance – Would eat with butter – Viewed as a “treat”

– Decaf – Sweeter – More robust – – – – –

Increase fiber Flavor varieties Prebaked Flavor varieties Doesn’t want it marketed for seniors – Individual portioned packages – Remove coconut

Yellow light (n 5 10; 30%–80% acceptance)

Savory oatmeal

40% acceptance – Appreciated the uniqueness

– Wants to see sweeter varieties

Red light (n 5 10;