Karla Paniagua & Jose Antonio Sada
Conjectures about the future of food are not new. Diverse studies outline a series of concerns and expectations that researchers and working groups in different geographies have raised about the availability and scarcity of commodities, significant changes in food practices, supply chain behavior, among other aspects of the complex food phenomenon: Los futuros de la alimentación en la CDMX (Arroyo, 2018); Co-Designing Water-Energy-Food Futures (Bell, 2018); The Future of Food – Who Will Be Hungry? (Russo, 2018); Imagining transformative futuresParticipatory Foresight for Food Systems Change (Hebinck, Vervoort, Hebinck, Rutting, & Galli, 2018); Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food (Wise, 2019); Future Food Today: A Cookbook by Space10 (Space 10, 2019); Strategic foresight for agriculture: Past ghosts, present challenges, and future opportunities (Prager, & Wiebe, 2021); Once Upon a Time We Ate Animals: The Future of Food (Van Voorst, 2021); Parlour of Food Futures: Tarot Toolkit for Food Futures Imaginaries (Dolejšová, 2022); The Anthropocene Cookbook: Recipes and Opportunities for Future Catastrophes (Cerpina & Stenslie, 2022) are just a few examples we refer to outline the vibrant interest around the topic and its intersection with futures studies and food design.
Cooking a Foresight Experience
In 2023, the Foodathon organizing team called on CENTRO’s Food Design and Futures Studies (Design of Tomorrow) programs to create a model to accompany the Foodathon experience, as participants were required to create recipes inspired by local ingredients but did not have a specific framework to guide them in this process. In this context, the following workshop model was made, and it was facilitated and improved by a team of graduates from the Food Design and Design of Tomorrow programs at CENTRO, a higher education institution specializing in the Creative Economy.
The Foodathon Challenge (Foodathon, 2024) is an initiative of the Ministry of Tourism of the state of Guanajuato to innovate local gastronomy while protecting the heritage and ingredients of the Bajío region. The collaboration between Foodathon and CENTRO is aligned around the objectives of optimizing the participants’ skills in systems thinking, anticipatory thinking, creativity, and adaptation to change by creating and prototyping a set of recipes adapted to different long-term scenarios for Mexico in 2033 based on the three pillars of the Foodathon challenge: sustainability, context, and innovation; as well as generating valuable and exciting content that contributes to encouraging discussion and reflection on change, food and sustainability in Mexico.
The number of participants who have been taking part in the Foodathon since 2021 is very diverse, which contributes to the challenge’s interest and complexity: 61 gastronomy students and teachers, chefs, unschooled cooks, and cooking enthusiasts, people from different social strata, backgrounds, and ages, split into 19 teams to create recipes inspired in local traditions and ingredients. Since the participants had no prior knowledge of foresight, the working model had to be very simple, balancing fact-gathering and analysis versus imagination and conjecture about possible futures.
For the working model, Joseph Voros’ (2003) foresight sequence was adapted: Context analysis (input, present and past), prospective analysis, scenario development, and prototyping of future objects, which was enriched with Bleecker’s (2009) design fiction concept and Dator’s (2019) archetypes of futures.
According to Julian Bleecker (2009, p.7):
Design fiction is a mix of science fact, design and science fiction. It is a kind of authoring practice that recombines the traditions of writing and story telling with the material crafting of objects. Through this combination, design fiction creates socialized objects that tell stories — things that participate in the creative process by encouraging the human imagination. The conclusion to the designed fiction are objects with stories. These are stories that speculate about new, different, distinctive social practices that assemble around and through these objects. Design fictions help tell stories that provoke and raise questions. Like props that help focus the imagination and speculate about possible near future worlds — whether profound change or simple, even mundane social practices.
In this vein, the creations that originated in the context of the workshop (recipes inspired by alternative scenarios of the future of the Bajío region of Mexico) worked as props or mundane objects that provoke reflection on what could happen in a few years, using the language of food design.
Regarding the framework of food design, the conceptual frameworks of Parasecoli (2016), Massari (2017), Zampollo (2023), and Sada (2020) were taken up, according to whom this field of knowledge makes possible the improvement of food cultures through the design of environments, contexts, experiences and consumption rituals, edible objects and products, production strategies, and waste management.
Following the frameworks above, the work sequence described in Figure 1 was carried out.
Figure 1. The methodological model. Source: The authors prepared this model using information from Voros (2003), Sterling (2009), Bleecker (2022), Dator (2017), and Sada (2020).
The sequence is simple; it consists of raising a topic of interest based on a problem identified by the participants in their ordinary lives (for example, water scarcity), then collecting facts and identifying stakeholders and non-human entities linked to the problem, based on the STEEP acronym (Dragt, 2023, p.46) (Figure 3); developing alternative scenarios in ten years (Figure 4); choosing the most provocative scenario (not necessarily the most desirable); developing a recipe for that scenario according to the layout referred in Table 1, creating the prototype of the dish and then presenting the results of the whole process to the Foodathon jury (Figures 7 and 8).
| Scenario | Ideas to transmit | Atmosphere and context | Food | Utensils | Consumption and eating design |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Write your project guiding ideas | List your communication goals. | Describe the environment of the food experience. | List the edible objects of the experience, produce, and ingredients. | List the non-edible objects of the experience, eating objects, and support objects. | Describe the dynamics of serving and eating. |
Table 1. Gastronomic experience components. Format prepared by the authors.
The scenario execution is represented as a loom in Figure 2. Each team proposed a story for three of the four Dator archetypes using the facts, stakeholders, and non-human entities identified in the context as components for the warp. Based on these inputs, the teams systematized facts that formed the basis for three future scenarios of continuation, collapse, and transformation; then, they chose the most provocative or fascinating scenario and developed a recipe based on the components described in Figure 6.
The original Dator’s archetypes include one more scenario not included in the Foodathon model: the discipline one. This was left out of the scheme of work for time and complexity; we will return to this decision in the findings section.
Figure 2. Layout for context analysis (loom). Source: The authors prepared this with information from Dator, 2019.
Figure 3. An example of context analysis of water shortage in the Bajío region of Mexico with STEEP dimensions. Source: Foodathon, 2023.
Figure 4. Scenarios example. Source: Foodathon, 2023.
Continuation scenario. “I ate with my family at my favorite insect restaurant. Due to high temperatures, very little is produced, and there is no water or commodities, so we try to take care of the scarce crops and feed ourselves with insects because it is cheaper.”
Collapse scenario. “Dear diary, today I feel very helpless; my friend was executed for stealing a piece of unleavened bread; he was desperate for the lack of food. The government is rationing; martial law is causing more violence. I just hope everything gets better. Pablo.”
Transformation scenario. “Less waste, more utilization.” Illustration of edible product made with flour, seasoning, canned puree, chips, and pasta.
Figure 5. Recipe layout. Own elaboration with information from Sada, 2020.
Figure 6. Recipe ingredients: Rabbit, squash, chayote, potato, carrot, corn, peas, green beans, cilantro, onion, green tomato, xoconostle, garlic, serrano peppers, jalapeño peppers, chiles güeros, guajillo peppers, ancho peppers, salt, thyme, marjoram, bay leaves. Oregano, chile de arbol, chile pulla, chile pasilla, coconut oil, tortillas. A glass of Mexican honeysuckle water accompanies it.** Source: Foodathon, 2023.
Figure 7. Sketch and prototype example made with plasticine, paper, and watercolors, Josefitas de San Angel. Source. Foodathon, 2023.
Findings From the Workshop Experience
Despite the participants’ differences in age and background, they could understand and apply the work model fluently. For the teams that already had the recipe in mind from the beginning, it was an additional difficulty to reflect on the present conditions and make conjectures about what could happen according to those conditions; however, after an initial moment of friction, the participants gave themselves to the experience with a willingness and attitude of learning, achieving interesting conclusions and scenarios and all teams completed the 100% of the process steps (context analysis, scenario ideation, recipe, model, and prototype development).
Space and materials greatly influenced the production process. The workshop was held over two days, and the layout of the room where it was held on the first day needed to be revised and allowed for proper air circulation. This was corrected on day two, significantly improving the fluidity of the experience. Also, it was observed that using paper, plasticine, and drawings, common elements at school age, established a common language that blurred the differences between the teams.
The workshop’s success was due to the team of facilitators working very closely together. As graduates of two different programs, the coaches shared visions, tools, and solutions and even exchanged their roles leading the various teams. This allowed the participants to hear other points of view and be accompanied by a qualified, interested, and encouraging person who guided them and kept them motivated until the final stage. In this sense, the Foodathon continued the students’ training during the postgraduate course.
Given that the purpose of the Foodathon is to innovate local gastronomy while preserving heritage and ingredients, we consider it useful to include the futures approach in subsequent iterations because the analysis conducted by participants and the evidence provided by the context itself provides overwhelming evidence that both gastronomic heritage and ingredients can be compromised as a result of driving forces such as climate change, organized crime, the breakdown of the social fabric, migration, and globalization, among others. This goes in addition to the replicability of the model, which provokes a series of creative reflections about the future and, at best, it could contribute to devising strategies to advocate for more desirable futures for the region and the country.
The most relevant conclusion regarding the use of the framework described above is as follows: Although in this first approach, it was considered more appropriate to omit Dator’s discipline scenario because there would not be enough time to execute it and because it tends to be more difficult for audiences unfamiliar with the foresight process, the results showed the indisputable need to include it in future iterations, since this archetype allows participants to test the status quo that preponderates rampant growth as the only possibility for the future. Today, more than ever, it is crucial to question this logic that has been historically taken for granted to propose alternatives in the face of the scarcity of ingredients, resources, social stability, and certainty in the spirit of seeking answers that guarantee not only human survival but also the harmonious living of all planetary entities and elements.
Figure 8. Other prototype examples: The Cure Cake, Burning Heart, Flexible Broth of Abundance, Those That Invoice, Grandma’s Mole, The Xoconostle Flower, Trino, The Ritual of Flavors, Mousse, Cenaam Food. Source: Foodathon, 2023.
References
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Cerpina, Z. & Stenslie, S. (2022) The Anthropocene Cookbook: Recipes and Opportunities for Future Catastrophes. The MIT Press.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful for the collaboration of the team of coaches and graduates of
Food Design and Design of Tomorrow: Miguel Aznar, Juan Granados, Ivan Hernandez, Mauricio Rodriguez, Miriam Ruiz, and Gabriela Valarezo for their invaluable contributions to this work’s creation and achievement.
Notes
* A previous version of this text was published in November 2023 on the Food Tech portal: https://thefoodtech.com/columnistas/itakatl-un-caso-de-exito-sobre-food-design-aplicado-sobre-el-futuro/.
** The complete recipe is not reproduced for copyright reasons.
Authors’ Affiliation
Karla Paniagua https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0795-3720, kpaniagua@centro.edu.mx
Jose Antonio Sada https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0499-9427, jsada@centro.edu.mx
