The german philosopher Feuerbach said in his famous work of 1862, “Man is what he eats” (If you prefer, man becomes what he eats). Eating the food make it ours, it becomes part of us, we do not make only the nutritional qualities needed to sustain ourselves but all that it is and that it represents. In recent decades, the only interest that we have towards food is both cheap and that minimizes the expenditure of energy to prepare it. We are completely losing contact with it. But if we do not know what we eat, who we are? The food not only food, but is fraught with cultural, social, ethical and moral standards and a greater awareness and responsibility of the individual are the only keys of a possible change.

The Food Design arises from the consideration of food as a design object and the ingredients that make it up are seen as materials. How to design object must also be assessed from the point of view of sustainability, shape, material, design, packaging and rituals of use. This process aims to create new objects in terms of taste, texture, temperature, color and texture. With the Food Design the food is no longer generated empirically, as was the case since the beginning of man, but is the result of research ranging from science, technology, nutrition, stems from a project.

A product of Food Design is contructed by configuring the edible object through the design project, it will be good and will have all the quality, politics and ethics that correspond to a contemporary edible object. Food Design is similarly transnational, multi-identitary and metaterritorial. The project allows the embracing of any identity, the contruction and creation of any type of emotional bond, whether figurative or abstract, because these components are part of the design process. In Food Design, by incorporating elements of usability and ergonomics into the project in many ways the edible object resolves, or even revolutionises, the act of eating. The Food is one of the most conservative, because it is associated with fear, with the customs and prohibitions, through food design we propose a new ways of interact with food.

We also consider the values ​of the values of global and ex-industrial society, nomadism, the morphing of attitude, lifestyle stages, fashion, media, intangible representational values, brand and status. All of this results in edible objects that are totally different to those presented by the food industry, which hides its artificiality behind a layer of kitsch, or the gastronomic sector which produces works of craftsmanship that may be good or bad, but which are made according to a more or less authentic tradition. However, what is important is that they are produced without reflection, without a product culture and without awareness of what is contemporary.

A project that summarizes these concepts is Spamt of Martí Guixè, the most authoritative figure in terms of food design. With Spamt (acronym for és pa amb tomàquet) Guixè works with a plate of traditional Spanish Catalan bread on which you rub tomato, and add salt and oil, with a universal format. This traditional element of cousin wasn’t out of step with new forms of behaviour. It can imagine a slice of bread with tomato in the countryside, or in a rustic setting, but not in front ao a computer.

The same Guixè considers it an unconscious hindrance to progress, or at least to a more contemporary mode of behaviour. The idea of ​​Guixè is to fill in the tomatoes with bread and other ingredients such as anchovies or chili sauce so you can eat with one hand, an uncomfortable slice of bread turns into a healthy snack to eat comfortably in front to the PC.

Bibliography
Eat Love. Food concept by eating-designer Marije Vogelzang – BIS Publishers, Amsterdam, 2008

Webliography

www.ifooddesign.org