Hidden geographies behind the food we eat

Today, on my morning walk to parque del oeste, I was wondering about my blueberry smoothie. It is a smoothie, I like to drink on my Sunday mornings. It is very simple, just five ingredients. Very easy to make.

img

So, after my walk, I entered the nearby Carrefour and started collecting the ingredients.

The places the things come from blew my mind.

The bananas come from Costa Rica and the blueberries come from Argentina. I was mildly shocked at my lack of so-called Material consciousness, even though I like to call myself a designer. I made a map of all the ingredients.

img

Imagine, if I would have to be like Thomas, who made his own toaster, and make my smoothie from scratch, I would not be able to make it to my office for several weeks. So, I have decided to document these as reflective accounts. Hopefully, It helps me become more conscious about the food I eat and the places it comes from, the stories that those places have, and the stories I make with them.

I will be using an excellent tool — Fabien’s Proximo to create interactive maps and descriptions of the geographies and stories. This page will work as an index to reach them.

  1. Blueberry Smoothie

  2. Zucchini Daal Curry - still cooking

I encourage you to do the same and hopefully we can create a shared food consciousness encyclopedia that helps us understand the stories behind the materials we eat. This is especially important with climate change and the recent COP26 in Glasgow. If you end up making one, please tweet to me at @rohit7gupta and I will add it here :)

Buen finde 🌧

Cheers!

Rohit


Recent posts

Experiments with getting to like a humble Salad for a meal
Accepting Alipay payments using deta serverless functions