As a Future Food Designer, she designs new ways of food production. Meat? A stage passed. Even vegetables will no longer have to be grown in the future. If it were up to Chloé Rutzerveld (Landgraaf, 1992), in the future fungi, bacteria and yeasts will form the basis and the sensory experience will be generated by virtual reality, augmented reality, touch, smell and sound.
Text: Bart-Jan Brouwer
Online editor: Natasha Hendriks
Where does your fascination with food come from?
“It has always been there. I come from South Limburg and eating and dining together is very important there. My grandfather and grandmother had a large vegetable garden. I participated in competitive swimming very intensively and was therefore very conscious about healthy nutrition. But before I didn't have the idea that I would find my work in it. That idea arose at the TU in Eindhoven, where I had chosen a bachelor's degree in Industrial Design. The first year didn't interest me, the turning point was in the second year. I came into contact with the Next Nature Network's cultured meat project led by Koert van Mensvoort. We students were challenged to think of ways in which cultured meat can be integrated into society. For me it was an aha moment, suddenly everything came together: it turned out that I could combine my interest in food with technology, art and science.”
This led to your project In Vitro Me in 2012, about growing cultured meat on your own body. Tell.
“Meat is far from sustainable: just think of CO2 emissions and the amount of water, energy and agricultural land associated with livestock farming. Cultured meat is an alternative in which muscle tissue is grown from animal cells outside the animal's body. But why should we use animal tissue at all when there are so many tasty plant-based solutions? I designed a personal bioreactor, a kind of amulet connected to your vascular system, with which people can grow meat on their own body from their own (stem) cells. The underlying question is: if you absolutely want to continue eating meat, how far are you willing to go? On the one hand, the project focuses on the passive attitude of the consumer, on the other hand, I find it interesting to involve consumers in new technologies at an early stage, so that they can form their own opinion instead of just reading about future products or technologies in the media. read."
To bring people closer to technology, you organized The Other Dinner, an experimental and interactive dinner that discusses the meat culture of the past, present and future. “The most fun thing I've ever done! I was able to work on one project undisturbed for three months. With that dinner I wanted to break taboos – why, for example, pork and not mouse meat? – and push to look at the future with a more open mind. There were sixty people - consumers, students, scientists, artists... First parts of animals that we normally never eat were on the table, then strange animals such as muskrats, and finally we started making our own cultured meat based on mouse cells. In six groups, the strange dishes – stuffed pig's feet, stew of cockscombs and wattles, black pudding and mouse liver parfait – were prepared, depilated and cleaned by the participants themselves. Quite extreme.”
Preparing a muskrat or a pig's snout is one thing, but tasting it...
“There was a certain form of social pressure, haha. But also because they had spent so much time on it, people were willing to taste it. Most of them even really enjoyed it!”
What is your goal as a Future Food Designer?
“In my position I use information, knowledge and data from science that frustrates or fascinates me. So I leave with the interactive installation Future Food Formula seeing that environmental factors influence the crops: nutritional value, color, size, shape, taste, texture... I find it fascinating that you can tweak your end product just by the light, temperature or pH value of the soil. As a designer you are interested and passionate, you devote yourself completely to a process and all those efforts result in a final manifestation, whether it is an installation, an experimental dinner or a prototype. People come and watch, you get feedback. These reactions provide input for further action.”
What is left on our plate, let's face it, fifty years?
“Food is something very beautiful, I really enjoy eating and I really love fresh fruit and vegetables. But I really wonder: what nutrients are still in it these days? Is there only water left in our vegetables because the soil is so impoverished? That's why I really like using microbially produced nutrients as a basis, so that you get all the nutrients and can turn them into something tasty by designing the shape, experience, taste and texture yourself.”
In your fight against food waste and fascination with the amount of sweetness in vegetables, you made syrup waffles from vegetable waste.
“I wanted to show that we can do much more with residual flows from the vegetable industry than making boring soups and sauces, by making smart use of the natural properties of the crops. For example, beets and carrots contain a lot of sugar. You can make syrup from the vegetable juice and waffles from the fibers. For example, I used a typical Dutch delicacy, the stroopwafel, to tell the story to a wide audience. The only problem is that the vegetable syrup waffles do not keep. Fibers attract moisture, the high fiber content makes the waffles quickly soft. So it really is a fresh product, I cannot package them. To make them sustainable, I would have had to add sugar and think industrially. And that is not what I want to say with the STROOOP project! The stroopwafel itself doesn't really interest me, it could just as well have been a different product. What fascinates me is looking at an everyday ingredient differently and seeing how consumer perception changes.”
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