Children weigh in on future foods
Saturday 26 September I was invited by Martijn Kirsten of Klassewerk Delft Stichting to give a Jeugdcollege, a lecture and activity for children age 8-14, at Theater de Veste in Delft. This is not my usual audience, so I took the opportunity to design an exercise to learn what our future generation wants to see for the future of food.
We began with a brief explanation about how fruits and vegetable are bred for certain traits, and these traits served certain purposes. During the discussion, I learned that the young participants found the following purpose in their favourite fruits and veggies: healthy, like spinach, yummy, like apples, and nice to share with friends, like strawberries.
Then, I told them about other purposes, namely, the Sustainable Development Goals. Can food do something to help? What should the market from the future look like? Here are some of the many ideas young participants shared that afternoon. Also, I asked for their permission to share their inventions.
To give more space for nature, and animals: a broccoli that grows very small but enlarges when cooked, like popcorn.
To reduce food waste: fruits and vegetables that have a longer shell life.
What I find particularly interesting here is that this was not an example I mentioned, and this imagery of the syringe was also not one I'd shown!
To reduce packaging: make fruits and vegetables with thicker peel so we don't need to wrap them in plastics.
Also not pictured here, a child invented a berry that would taste like pizza and of which you'd only need to eat one a day for all your nutritional needs, to deal with malnutrition, and also, a money tree to deal with poverty.
Children quickly understood how our food is linked to so many aspects of our lives, locally and globally, and how we can make choices for what food we want and need. Together, they invented traits they'd like to see in the market of the future, working towards societal goals.
Inspired? I surely am.
