Pleased to Eat You: Designs on the Working Lunch

Enjoy your Yoga Bunny Detox? Or do you think lunch is for wimps?

British designers are factoring food into their plans for creating healthy workplaces. Happiness is found to be most closely associated with health, according to the Map of World Happiness, produced by Adrian White at the University of Leicester in 2006, when the UK ranked 41st out of 178 countries.

Haworth, a global market leader in the innovative design and production of environmentally responsible ‘office worlds’, turned their UK office into a Lunch Lab at Clerkenwell Design Week, to highlight our relationship with food – and food’s effect upon our mood.

If you feel in need of a shot of coffee mid morning, or find yourself nodding off in the afternoon, it’s probably because you’re lacking something in your diet (unless you had too much to drink and only three hours sleep the night before).

Just as well that the essential oils from some plants are stimulants, without the dangers of tea, coffee, alcohol or drugs. Oils from basil, geranium, nutmeg, rosemary, thyme and marjoram can help the body recover from fatigue.

People who use essential oils as part of their daily routines appear to have a higher level of resistance to illness, catch fewer colds than average and recover quickly if they do. Oils that work most effectively against bacteria and stimulate the production of white blood cells include lavender, bergamont and tea tree. Oils that make ideal inhalants if you have a cold include peppermint, pine and thyme. And just imagine having these on hand in the office. Wouldn’t it smell lovely?


As for a healthy working diet, let RCA graduate Rob Maslin take care of that. His Free Lunch installation explores the possibilities of using office spaces to feed their occupants, transforming the decorative aquarium into a sustainable system with the potential to produce a fish-and-salad meal for every worker.

Aquaponics… is the creation of a symbiotic relationship between fish and plants. Fish waste in the form of ammonia is turned into nitrite then nitrates by bacteria in the water. When filtered through a plant bed, the plants clean the water for the fish to live in, creating a closed-loop system with two food crops.” And presumably the essential oils will come in handy here too, masking smells of freshly killed and gutted fish? No wonder Pret sticks to crayfish.

For carnivores, ‘speculative designer’ James King’s project ‘Dressing the Meat of Tomorrow’ investigates “the recent advances in tissue engineering that enable us to grow meat without out the expense, cruelty and traditions of rearing the whole animal.”  King examines how we might choose to give shape, texture and flavour to a new sort of food in order “to better remind us where it came from.” Hmmm…

The MRI Steak, an ‘anatomically complicated piece of meat,’ is found by scouring the countryside with a mobile animal MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) unit to find the most beautiful pigs, cows, chickens and sheep. Once located, these specimens are scanned from head to toe, creating accurate cross-sectional images of their inner organs. “The most interesting and aesthetically pleasing examples of anatomy are used as templates to create moulds for the in-vitro meat (we wouldn’t choose to eat the same old boring parts that we eat today). The result is a satisfyingly complicated and authentic form of food.”

The bad news is that you can’t use Lisa Johansson’s Compost Distiller to convert animal waste into alcohol, soil nutrients and compost. However, her curiously rudimentary looking invention makes effective use of fruit and vegetable peelings, the organic content of which would otherwise be lost. By adding a fermentation and distillation step between the waste bin and the garden composter it’s is possible to harness the energy and nutrients stored in waste before it becomes soil. This concept could enable councils and companies, as well as individuals, to deal with organic waste locally, rather than relying upon landfill sites. What’s more, the design is ideal for use in communal kitchens, cafes and restaurants, or as a shared facility between neighbours.


Fancy trying this in the office? Or will you be popping out to the pub for a sarnie?


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About Author Profile: Susan Muncey

Trend consultant Susan Muncey, is Editor of Visuology Magazine. In 2008, she founded online curiosity shop, ShopCurious.com. She writes on style and trends for several blogs, including Visuology.com, ShopCuriousMag.com and The Dabbler. She previously owned cult West London boutique, Fashion Gallery, one of the first concept stores in the world. Susan graduated in geography from Cambridge University and is also an Associate Member of the CFA Institute. She lives in London with her husband.

8 thoughts on “Pleased to Eat You: Designs on the Working Lunch

  1. Wormstir@gmail.com'
    Worm
    May 28, 2011 at 17:18

    I’m currently drowning in a surplus of salad leaves as they’ve gone a bit rampant this year for some reason! So lunch for me for the foreseeable future will be leafy! I hope that in vitro meat is perfected soon as possible, I think it will be a real progressive leap to remove the priviledge of eating meat from the unpleasantness of having to take an animal’s life for it

  2. peter.burnet@hotmail.com'
    Peter
    May 29, 2011 at 01:05

    If you feel in need of a shot of coffee mid morning, or find yourself nodding off in the afternoon, it’s probably because you’re lacking something in your diet

    Maybe coffee?

  3. Gaw
    May 30, 2011 at 23:46

    Fascinating. I remember coming across the argument somewhere that turkeys had willingly volunteered to be eaten by man in return for our looking after them and ensuring they reproduced. Surprisingly few animals are domesticable but it’s a very successful strategy for survival and propagation. I wonder whether in vitro meat will be another grave, man-made threat to the animal kingdom.

  4. andrewnixon@blueyonder.co.uk'
    May 31, 2011 at 09:09

    What do goldfish taste like, I wonder? Anyone willing to admit trying one?

  5. Worm
    May 31, 2011 at 09:29

    well I’ve eaten carp which is somehow related I think, and it was absolutely disgusting (but it did come from a muddy lake) perhaps a goldfish from a nice clean fishtank might taste better…

    • Brit
      May 31, 2011 at 10:10

      Blimey.

  6. robmaslin@gmail.com'
    June 17, 2011 at 16:00

    Goldfish are part of the carp family, but I would not eat the goldfish if I were you the aquarium industry uses carcinogenic heavy metals for the treatment of fish diseases. I imagine it’s ok for fish but defiantly not for humans. The gold fish were used for the exhibit because of the exhibition and the fish tank being the biggest size it was possible to exhibit. It’s entirely feasible to stock a fish tank twice the size with edible fish stock such as other species of carp or tilapia. Its even possible to grow fresh water mussels.

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