Food Design to reimagine the land

I just watched Mariana Bacci's “Regeneração no Prato” and felt a quiet jolt of joy when she mentioned the academic roots of Food Design and credited the Food Design Thinking methodology I created and structured years ago. I liked how elegantly Mariana brought the conversation home. In a country where Food Design is still too often reduced to “Instagrammable plates,” she showed that the discipline can (and must) tackle hunger, the 25% surge in ultra-processed consumption, food waste, and climate impact, all while celebrating producers like those of Serra da Mantiqueira who are quietly regenerating the land with world-class olive oils, coffees, and beers.

If you're new to Food Design this video is going to be useful. t’s clear, grounded, and deeply necessary.

Obrigado, Mariana. You spoke for a lot of us, and you did it beautifully.

Full english transcript below

Transcript:

What is a beautiful dish to you? That kind of food you look at and immediately want to take a picture of, right? To capture the beauty of the food, the balance of colors, as if that image holds the flavor. But what if, when looking at this dish, we started to see beyond it and perceive the impact it has—the impact on the planet, on those who plant it, on those who serve it, on those who eat it? Regeneration is on the plate. Many people think that food design is about aesthetics, about a beautiful dish, about a dish that is pleasing to the eye, Instagrammable. But what if I told you that inside our plate there’s a whole world hidden – the environment, society, climate? It’s all right there in front of us and we don’t even realize it. Today I don’t want to talk about taste or flavor, I want to talk about the invisible, about what changes our world with every bite.When we put food in our mouths, what really tells us if it’s good? More than the taste, it’s the connection. And our food choices connect us to culture, to memory and to the territory. And it is these choices that can allow us to have regenerative attitudes. Do you know why? According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), one-third of all food produced in the world is wasted, while more than 735 million people go hungry. And the problem is not one of production, but of the system, of the way we grow, distribute and consume food.The UN also warns that food is one of the main factors impacting the environment. 34% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the food chain. This means that every meal is also a political, environmental, and cultural choice. But what exactly is design? First, we need to understand that design is about planning, it’s about projecting. Designing with purpose is one of the translations I like the most. Food design offers a broad perspective on creating solutions to complex problems, starting with people. This term emerged in the 1990s with the Spanish designer Martí Guixé, [Learn more about the History of Food Design here] who was considered the first to look at food as a field of design. He told me, when we met in Barcelona, that in the future we wouldn’t even need cooks. In Italy, Dr. Francesca Zampollo created and structured an academic method for this discipline called Food Design Thinking. Food design, then, emerged from an encounter between gastronomy, design, anthropology, and sustainability. It encompasses all innovation that improves people’s relationship with food, such as designing food, experiences, services, and systems. In Europe, this movement gained momentum with schools like the Polytechnic University of Turin, the University of Milan, and the Design Academy in the Netherlands, which also began training designers focused on food and sustainable innovation. In Spain, schools like Elisava and the European Institute of Design also explore these possibilities of the method in the field of gastronomic experimentation. Food design is a systemic approach to any part of the food chain, using various methods. In Brazil, we started talking about this in 2010, right? It started arriving here through researchers and professionals who brought this perspective to the area. Initially focused on product development. The first food design course in Brazil, and in Latin America, took place in 2017 at the European Institute of Design, coordinated by Christian. And I’m part of that group. Today, Brazil stands out in Food Design in Latin America and Europe, connected with global events, laboratories, and ecosystems focused on innovation, food regeneration, and sustainability. It was almost 10 years ago that I discovered food design, while I was searching for gastronomic stories and experiences while studying in Brazil and Europe. At that time, I immersed myself in haute cuisine to understand the creative process of the world’s best chefs. And that’s when I realized that behind the gastronomic experience of an incredible dish, there’s a design process.Catalan chef Ferran Adrià, once considered the best chef in the world, told me during the launch of ElBulli’s sketchbook that cooking is about designing from ideas, but that creativity needs method. He had designers on his team, such as Luki Huber, who created the manualing methodology based on this experience.And after participating in international events with other food designers around the world, and looking at Brazil, I understood that it’s not enough to simply reproduce here what is done in Europe. Our context is different. Here, we still live with inequality and disorganized food systems.According to IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), hunger still affects 6.48 million people, and the consumption of ultra-processed foods has grown by 25% in the last 10 years, especially among children, as shown in the Fiocruz report. So I realized that Food Design in Brazil cannot be limited to just creating ingredients and experiences. It needs to be a tool for social and environmental regeneration.And would you like to see how this appears nearby in the Serra da Mantiqueira mountain range? The producers here in the Serra da Mantiqueira have been transforming the land. It has award-winning olive oils, specialty coffees, and craft beers that have conquered the world. Every choice to consume locally strengthens families, generates income, reduces transportation costs, and has less impact on the climate. And most importantly, it highlights the geographical identity of these products. This preserves our food culture. So this is food design in practice.