Designverb

Category: food

Alissa Hamilton: The truth about Orange Juice, yuck!

March 1, 2009


Oh my! I don’ think I’ll be buying packaged orange juice ever again! A must read! Shakes me up just as Supersize Me or FastFoodNation did.

Buy her book “Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice” here.

“IDEAS: What isn’t straightforward about orange juice?

HAMILTON: It’s a heavily processed product. It’s heavily engineered as well. In the process of pasteurizing, juice is heated and stripped of oxygen, a process called deaeration, so it doesn’t oxidize. Then it’s put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year. It gets stripped of flavor-providing chemicals, which are volatile. When it’s ready for packaging, companies such as Tropicana hire flavor companies such as Firmenich to engineer flavor packs to make it taste fresh. People think not-from-concentrate is a fresher product, but it also sits in storage for quite a long time.”

Read the rest of the article at Boston.com or after the jump!
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TED Prize 2009: Sylvia Earle

February 22, 2009

” I wish you would use all means at your disposal — films! expeditions! the web! more! — to ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas, hope spots large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of the planet.”
– Sylvia Earle

This is the TEDwish that made me promise to cut back on seafood (and sushi consumption) this year, though I’ve learned it’s better to eat smaller fish that reproduce faster from a previous lecture on ocean life as well. Also helping out will be the free release in the astonishing documentary OCEANS (youtube) by Jacques Perrin (Winged Migration) to help educate people about the ocean sometime this year.
via TEDprize

Weekend Links

February 15, 2009


Snow is melting, birds are chirping, and warmth is near. Hello spring, bye bye winter.

Gaming: Real air pilots race simulated pilots.
Art: Matthew Chambers sculptures. Pretty neat.
Art: The drawings of James Jean.
Tech: Storytlr.com, recompiling your feeds to make sense.
Object: A pretty cool scale with large text!
Tech: Spreednews.com, reading text fast without page turns via your pda.
Tech: DingItUp.com, be informed when a  webpage is up or down!
Science: Visualizing Invisible Magnetic Waves. Very cool!
Art: Toilet roll cutout art work by Yuken Teruya.

Sharky: Shary Tea Bag Holder

January 29, 2009



I’m not sure what the deal with sharks is this week, but after finding the fun “There’s a Shark in my Soup Bowl” design, I’ve come across another whimsical use of a shark fin for a tea bag holder from designer Pablo Matteoda . Sharky holds your tea leaves in a floating metal fin container while slowly dispersing tea leaf colors into the water creating a shark attack like scene. Fun, but also somewhat terrifying.

Ruckl Crystal Glassworks

January 23, 2009


Very cool! Maybe it’s the twisting screw bottom, though most likely the draft angles and measurements etched into the crystal glass. Very industrial, very “I want I want!”

“The Ruckl Crystal Glassworks in the Czech republic manufactures an extensive range of cut 24% leaded crystal in a wide variety, from the simple to the extremely complex, with gilt, hand painting and sandblasting.

Inspired by the sometime archaic-seeming world of the engineer, each piece in the the engineering collection is so named for the etched designs on all the pieces involving the dimensions and spec’s of each piece.

The engineering collection also includes three additional lines: involute gearing, basic quotation, and the splined shaft designs.”

via unicahome

Hong Kong: Food

January 11, 2009


Over the holiday break I spent over a week in Hong Kong visiting family and the unavoidable addictive food! Yes, Hong Kong is a city of culture, shopping, people, and high quality Asian food! I thought I’d share a bit of my break with ya’ll and figured out I’d start off with one of the best things, Food in Hong Kong! Other topics will follow of course.

I’ve always spoken about how Food is very much like designing. You have to pick out your ingredients (materials), what’s in season (material cost), cook it (assemble+manufacture), use everything (be sustainable), plate it (package), eat it (consume), brand it, get a reputation, rinse and repeat. “A week eating in Hong Kong makes ya go on a 1 year diet when you return home!”
Enjoy the collection of pictures!
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