Category: Food

The Raw Tom Outrage

January 20, 2013 By arne hendriks 1

Tom Watkins is a 15 year old kid from Amsterdam who’s raised on a Raw food vegan diet. Raw foodies eat uncooked, unprocessed organic foods as a large percentage of the diet. The idea is that raw food is healthier than cooked food because it doesn’t…

One Bean Coffee

December 30, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

According to the Water Footprint Network the fresh water involved in the production of a single cup of coffee (125ml) is 140 liters. One part of coffee consumes 1100 water parts. To make an average cup of coffee requires around 40 coffeebeans. To produce one…

Deflating the Food Bubble

October 15, 2012 By arne hendriks 1

The era of world food security is coming to an end simply because we can’t sustain the way food is produced. Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Research Centre in Washington, says the demands for food are growing so fast that unless we deflate the…

Abundance Fantasies: Corn Cult

July 27, 2012 By arne hendriks 1

Mexican protesters against the high tortilla prices in 2007 rallied around an oversized corn. Their public display of the desire for an abundant food supply ressembles cargo cults in which the visualisation of desired abundance, or the context in which the abundance is believed to exist, is…

Global Human Biomass

June 22, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

A new REPORT published on BioMed Central rightfully warns us of the need to consider the ecological effects of increasing human weight. Obese and overweight people globally consume an extra amount of food that could feed 300 million people. From data collected in 2005 researchers calculated the…

TEDx Lecture on Shrinking

June 10, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

During TEDx Brainport we gave a short talk on some of the reasons the human species should shrink, some of its possible consequences, and how it could be done. See it HERE.

D.I.Y. Shrink List.

April 7, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

If we are to believe this last report published by MIT Press, economic collapse is just around the corner. If that’s true it won’t hurt to prepare our children both mentally and physically for a world in which there will be a lot less of…

Raspberry Explosion

April 1, 2012 By arne hendriks 1

One of the most important reasons to shrink the human species is that we’ll shrink towards a world of abundance. At 50 cm we’ll only need about 2% to 10% of the resources we need now. A simple grape will have the size of a…

Benito’s Rodents

February 20, 2012 By arne hendriks Off

During the Second World War Mussolini’s government urged Italians to keep guinea pigs to supplement their meager meat rations. Rodents are the world’s most widespread, adaptable, and prolific group of mammals. They reproduce well, grow fast, and can adapt to a wide variety of local…

Poultry/House

February 11, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

If we decide to shrink the human species our livestock may need to shrink with us. We’ll only consume about 2 to 10% of the food we consume today. The meat of one chicken could easily feed 100 people and one egg alone would be enough to…

High on Cheese

January 29, 2012 By arne hendriks 1

In the mid 19th century the Dutch were among the shortest people in Europe. 150 years later they are the tallest in the world. Perhaps not coincidentally this is precisely the period in which the Dutch consumption of cheese started its significant growth. Cheese contains…

Krill Adaptations

January 28, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

Because environments vary with both predictable patterns and with unpredictable but recurring events, ecologists have long been interested in the ecological adaptations that organisms use to survive periods in which the environment may be exceptionally harsh. One of the most interesting adaptations observed in the…

Somatostatin Zebrafish Farm

January 18, 2012 By arne hendriks 2

One of the most promising consequences of downsizing the human species is the change in space and time it’ll take to grow food. In several research installations at Food Forward (a look into the future of food) The Incredible Shrinking Man investigates new possibilities. Like the…

Ostrich BBQ

December 10, 2011 By arne hendriks 4

One of the most promising advantages of shrinking the human species would be the abundance of food. A single chicken could feed up to 100 people. But perhaps it’s not just a matter of abundance. We might encounter some unsuspected differences in the way we…

Milk

October 17, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Body height is a classic polygenic trait. About 80% to 90% of your height is inherited and 10% to 20% owed to environmental factors, of which nutrition is the most important. Of those nutrients perhaps milk is the one associated most with increased human height.…

Japanese Miniatures: Prepping Tiny Plastic Food

August 23, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

The consequences of shrinking the human body for the world’s food situation is a main topic of research for The Incredible Shrinking Man. One chicken could feed up to 100 people if we are 50 centimeters. That’s why it would be unwise to shrink agricultural…

Sunflower Table

May 3, 2011 By arne hendriks 2

Downsizing the human body will not only create an abundance of food, it will also open up unexpected new possibilities for sharing a meal. Possibilities like the dried sunflower table suggested by Marlyn Coetsier. Coetsier, a puppeteer from Amsterdam, researches how we will experience reality…

Small Food Physics

April 5, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

The Disproportionate Restaurant investigates the relationship with food and ingredients from the perspective of a human species of 50 centimeters tall. It maps possibilities that today’s chefs can only dream of, even in the age of molecular gastronomy. There is the relatively predictable resizing of portions and ingredients. A…

Baby Fruit

March 19, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

The upper end of the restaurant market is flooded by baby fruit and vegetables. Baby coconuts, Baby pineapples Baby courgettes, Baby every-single-fruit and vegetable-you-can-imagine. In today’s market only the products that catch the attention of consumers have a chance of becoming economically succesful. Playing with…

Speculative Cooking

January 31, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

In preparation for TransNatural and the Disproportionate Restaurant a public research kitchen was set up in the Waag in Amsterdam. Chef Martijn Jansen, together with several guests, investigated and speculated on our future relationship with food, ingredients, and cooking techniques. The kitchen was located right in…