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Naitian Zhang
In the Summer of 2021, I volunteered in Hunan, China.
I designed and taught a program-based-learning course named "The secrets of food: do you really know what you are eating?"
In the class, we explored the sensory inputs that food brings, analyzed the factors that influence food choices, and discovered personal connections with food through various designed activities.
Food is not merely a source of energy that fuels the human body, but also something that participates in a complex system and closely ties with our economical states, cultural backgrounds, and our emotions.
My students, my peers, my friends
The first activity that we did was bubble tea tasting. I prepared 4 different bubble tea: self-made bubble tea (milk+ black tea), bottled bubble tea found in supermarkets, bubble tea made at a bubble tea store (artificial milk powder+ tea+ syrup), bubble tea made at a bubble tea store (milk+ tea +syrup). I poured each type of milk tea into 4 identical bottles. Without any information given, the students were asked to taste 4 different types of bubble tea and describe their sensory experience. In the end, they were asked to identify each milk tea. In the activity, I raised the questions "Is milk tea really milk+ tea? What are the hidden ingredients in food products? How do the adding/substracting of ingredients influence the taste and overall impression of the product?"
Food Perceptions: What is food?
Activity 1: Bubble Tea Tasting
The second activity that we did was the food mystery box. In the first half of the activity, students were asked to cover their eyes and identify the snacks in a box using anything but visual information. They could touch the food, smell the food, eat the food, and hear the sound that they made while eating and touching. By eliminating the visual experience, which often gives us the most compelling information, I hope the students can focus on the other sensory experiences that food brings to us.
In the second half of the activity, several student volunteers were asked to taste a type of snacks without letting the audiences know. The volunteers could only use words to describe the snacks that they ate to their peers, who then need to identify the type of snack. From this part of the activity, the students explored how language plays a role in labeling a type of food and how we extract information from the food we eat.
Activity 2: Food Mystery Box
Food Choices: What influences our decisions on eating?
The third activity that we did was a package analysis. Each group of students analyzed a food package of their choices: potato chips, lollipops, instant porridge....And then the will present their analysis to their peers. They are asked to consider the following questions: "What information can we gain from the package? What does the color, pattern, elements, and text on the package tell you about the food? If you are ask to personify the food, how you you portray it?"
The fourth activity that we did was a "Food Oscar," a food-marketing competition. There are four categories: the most healthy food, the tastiest food, and the food that creates the most satisfaction. The students were asked to bring food that they thought was the most competitive in one of the categories and promote the food to the audience. After all the presentations, the audience would vote for the winner. By exploring different strategies of selling their "products" and attracting consumers, the students put themselves in the place of a merchant or corporation. "Things that happen in the market are not simply buying and selling," one of the students in the discussion said, "careful manipulations of language, packaging, and promotions play a huge role in our food chain."
Food and Self: What are the connections between food and us?
The final project of this course is to identify a type of food that can represent you the most. I raised the questions:
"What are some of the inherent characteristics of you and of the food of your choices?
"What are some of the labels that others put onto you? and onto the food?"
"If food can have personalities, what are they?"
"What is the growing environment of the food? of you?"
"Is how the food presents to the customer the same as how it actually tastes ?
"Is how you present yourself to others and to yourself the same?"
At the end, the students each drew a poster to illustrate the similarity between them and a dragon fruit, kiwi, hot pot, milk candies, or … a grilled chicken feet. They present their poster to each other and to the general public.
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