Co/Lab: Hungry for Change | Eat It! The Future is Fast Food!

Co/Lab: Hungry for Change is the successor to the Embassy of Food and builds on two years of design-driven research within the World Design Embassies of the Dutch Design Foundation. Where the Embassy laid the foundations by bringing together a broad coalition of designers, policymakers and businesses, the Co/Lab focuses on deepening that collaboration and developing practical tools for change. Barbara Vos, who shaped the Embassy of Food as creative lead over the past two years, is working in this third year with Ink Social Design. Together, they explore how organisations can better understand what influences consumer behaviour and how they can more convincingly translate their values into policy, communication and design.

What if we redesigned our food environment so that the healthiest and most sustainable choices became the most irresistible? A good question, because every day your choices are being influenced. Our food environment is designed to be fast, convenient and appealing. We are constantly tempted by irresistible snacks: grabbing something from a kiosk as we run for the train, picking up a greasy cheese roll at the petrol station, or facing a tempting biscuit at the checkout. Meanwhile, the healthier products often remain untouched.

A better environment doesn’t start with the individual

We are already experiencing the consequences of this unhealthy environment, as seen in the rise of chronic diseases, increasing healthcare demands and growing costs. It’s not that people are foolish or unwilling; the system itself makes it extraordinarily difficult. “‘A better environment starts with you’ is an illusion,” says creative strategist and researcher Barbara Vos. “The slogan was originally coined by oil company Exxon to shift responsibility for environmental pollution onto individuals rather than the industry itself. That remains at the heart of the problem: people are blamed for their choices, while the environments in which those choices are made have been designed by others. We can therefore redesign those environments too. If we don’t, we give commerce—driven by profit maximisation—carte blanche to decide what ends up on our plates, leaving salt, sugar and fat as the cheapest and most visible options.”

“People make normal choices in an unhealthy environment. Eighty percent of what’s on supermarket shelves is unhealthy, and Kentucky Fried Chicken advertises across the city that a junk food meal costs less than grocery shopping. The amount of unhealthy temptation is almost inhuman,” adds social designer and director of Ink Social Design, Anna Noyons. “Design can help to break that pattern, because designers don’t just respond to behaviour, they help shape it. If we understand how temptation works—what attracts people, how convenience operates, where their desires lie—then we can use that knowledge to make healthy and sustainable choices appealing,” she says.

The environment will not change as long as we treat only the symptoms or keep believing it’s down to the individual. Our choices are shaped by social and cultural patterns, by what’s considered normal and what we can afford, while in the United States, for example, food deserts exist where people have no access to healthy food at all. “What we want to demonstrate is that healthy and sustainable eating should not only be possible, but also the easiest and most attractive choice,” says Vos, who began her three years as creative lead with the aim of making the broad, abstract issue of our food system more visible and tangible.

Designers open up new perspectives

As creative lead of the Embassy of Food, Vos brought together designers, policymakers, businesses and researchers to explore how design can contribute to real change. “Designers can do more than simply come up with solutions,” says Vos. “They have the ability to bring new perspectives and ideas to problems that are stuck.”

In the first two years (2023 and 2024), the focus was on unravelling the food system, exploring the values behind it and bringing together different perspectives. The creative lead built a multi-voiced coalition of partners, each working in their own way on food, health and sustainability. Design served as a shared language, a way of connecting diverse interests and worlds. From that collaboration, three central themes were distilled: health, behaviour and food environment, which now form the foundation of Co/Lab: Hungry for Change.

This year, Barbara Vos once again leads a growing alliance of partners seeking to deepen and apply this design-driven way of working in practice. Alongside long-term partners such as Rabobank and the Province of North Brabant, new collaborators have joined, including the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, In4Art, and S+T+ARTS Hungry EcoCities. “Each partner brings something unique,” says Vos. “By identifying where our interests overlap and placing design at the centre, we create room for new insights and action. We don’t know exactly where we’ll end up, but we trust the process.”

The value of social design

“To further deepen the collaboration, we need social design as an area of expertise,” Vos believes. That’s why she began a partnership this year with Ink Social Design. “Ink understands better than anyone how design can contribute to behavioural change,” says Vos, “and they know how to translate insights about behaviour into something that actually works in practice.”

“Designers can play a major role in transforming the food system,” says Noyons, director of Ink. “Not by simply presenting citizens with something new, but by reshaping the systems around them. If we design structures and environments in such a way that sustainable choices naturally become the most attractive ones, behaviour changes almost automatically,” she explains.

She continues: “Designers are uniquely comfortable with uncertainty; they dare to work in processes where the outcome is still open. They have the creativity and vision to imagine what we cannot yet see, and the ability to reshape environments and offer new ways of acting. By designing, testing and learning together with partners, innovative solutions emerge that can be applied on a larger scale.”

The Three G’s

With its ability to make things tangible and practical, Ink Social Design has developed within Co/Lab: Hungry for Change a hands-on framework that helps organisations understand what drives consumer behaviour. This enables them to strengthen their role in the food network, place consumers at the centre and communicate their values more convincingly.

The framework revolves around the three G’s: Geluk (Happiness), Geld (Money) and Gemak (Ease); the main factors influencing people’s food choices. “If you don’t take those three into account when looking at how people make food choices, you lose connection,” says Vos. One of the key partners is the Province of North Brabant. Because of nitrogen restrictions and increasing pressure on soil, water and air, sustainable agriculture and consequently our eating habits, is high on the agenda in Brabant. This also applies to Alfred van Mameren, who leads ‘community-inclusive’ projects within the province, innovative campaign-style, initiatives focused on the food system, sustainable eating and strengthening the relationship between farmers, residents and government. “It’s not so much about policy or subsidies,” he says, “but about confronting the system in a challenging and provocative way.”

“As a long-standing partner of DDW, we often work with designers, such as over the past three years in Co/Lab: Hungry for Change. The collaboration with Barbara Vos and Anna Noyons of Ink Social Design has been extremely valuable,” he says. “In dialogue sessions and workshops, you learn how a marketer in retail thinks. We were also challenged to reflect on our own eating behaviour, our unconscious choices, and how we could engage DDW visitors to think about their own motives and decisions.”

To actively involve the public, a new fast-food brand has been developed with the provocative slogan “Eat It! The Future is Fast Food!” During Dutch Design Week, the accompanying snack bar will open at Ketelhuisplein, featuring a menu based on the three G’s: Money, Ease and Happiness.

In an engaging, non-preachy way, visitors can taste temptation as a driving force for change, as they are invited to reflect on their own eating habits and how our food environment shapes them. They can also talk with designers and partners. Visitors to the stand are often surprised that the Province of North Brabant is involved, notes Van Mameren. “That’s exactly the added value; we bridge government, entrepreneurs and residents, and spark discussions, including between visitors themselves, about food choices and where we should be heading. Hopefully, they leave with a takeaway consisting of a fresh perspective and a desire to make a difference.”

According to Van Mameren, the issue remains large and complex, with many players involved, and Co/Lab: Hungry for Change helps to explore new directions. “After DDW, I want to look back with our colleagues from the Health team on what the past three years have brought us. We’ll definitely build on that and hopefully, we’ll be back at DDW,” he says.

📷 Max Kneefel