The Bay Area is a cradle of environmentalism and a region with a rich trove of health and medical research and resources. In this blog, we’ll report on the deepening understanding of how the places we inhabit and the lifestyles we adopt contribute to our own health and the health of our communities.
Umm… no. If the food label is really that simple, then why does it need a 28-minute video explanation?
The current nutrition facts label leaves a lot of questions unanswered: What’s the deal with saturated and trans fats? How can I tell how much a product has been processed? Which sugars are natural or added?
And Americans still eat too much, and too much of the wrong stuff. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two-thirds of adults and one-third of children in America are overweight or obese.
Thus the spawning of Rethink the Food Label, a crowd-sourced competition to reinvent an "informative, instructive and memorable" food label.
Competitors can "reimagine a label entirely based on food quality, food justice or lesser-known chemosensory characteristics," or incorporate "a food's carbon footprint or its cultural significance," according to the submission page.
The national contest is organized by News21, a project of the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism (which is a partner of The Bay Citizen), and Good Magazine. The panel of judges contains an all-star cast of designers and foodies, including Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore’s Dilemma."
“The idea is basically to spark a conversation and to see what kind of creative things people could come up with,” said Diana Jou, the competition’s co-organizer and a fellow of the News21 Project. “The goal is not to directly change policy, but with the success of this project I think we could get the attention of the White House and Michelle Obama.”
Submissions are due online by July 1. Top designs will be revealed July 15.
© The Bay Citizen, 2012
