Wired 2013 Video: Natalie Jeremijenko
Natalie Jeremijenko
Natalie JeremijenkoNate Lanxon / Canon 5D MkIII

Natalie Jeremijenko wants us to reimagine our relationship with food by kissing frogs, drinking St John's Wort-dosed cola and listening to mussels sing.

Speaking at Wired 2013, the visual artist, engineer, neuroscientist and ecologist explained that we should be redirecting our enthusiasm for the food movement by ensuring we aim to increase biodiversity and improve environmental health, while making tasty dishes.

"There are some popular misconceptions around reimagining food and food systems," she said. "I run a clinic that treats health as an environmental issue and environment as a health issue. I've developed a spin out organisation from the clinic known as the Farmacy, which focuses on things that not only reduce food miles and fertilisers and pesticides, but improve environmental health and raises the bar on what the food movement thinks it's doing."

One of the first projects was around getting people to eat flowers. Urban agriculture and vertical gardens are a popular trend, however Jeremijenko says these projects must not compete with rural agriculture but fill the gap the traditional industry cannot. In the city, growing flowers is the best way to improve air quality and increase biodiversity, while producing delicious edibles that are highly perishable and non-distributable.

"Flowers are the most nutrient dense food we know of and helps in the cultural shift we're in midst of. It's not about calories but powerful antioxidants." Flowers contain an abundance of this, while at the same time supporting pollinators. Soon we'll be seeing black pansies draping the exterior of a carpark in Shoreditch, where Jeremijenko has been commissioned to setup a huge display. "Companies can think of it as a banner ad that shows they're improving air quality, increasing biodiversity and supporting pollinators."

The flowers are also being used in Flower Floss, a type of candy floss made with isomalt, a sugar substitute used by diabetics, and a bee pollen that fosters bacterial diversity in the lower gut. It "creates a tasty future and carnivalesque promise of food," says Jeremijenko, while "improving biodiversity in the lower gut and your urban environment".

She's brought this process to her Manufactory, which she describes as a party and assembly line mashup. A spinoff teaches kids how to create the floss and open-source cola, which uses St John's Wort for a buzz and aster flowers as a strong antiviral element. "It's a convivial opportunity to discuss the issues and a radical transparency of what's in your food."

Taking her demonstrations out of the classroom to the public space, Jeremijenko has also setup the Mussel Choir in the East River. Here, sensors tell an automatic soundtrack whether the mussels are open or closed. "It tells us a lot about water quality. When they're open the track is singing, when closed there's a humming, which is less good." 

Melding the food classes and lessons taught through public installations is Jeremijenko's Cross Species Adventure club, a supper club with a difference. The Wetkisses, for instancem, are marshmallows injected with lividium, which generates anti-fungal agents. It's what helps frogs and other amphibians fight chytrid fungus, a mass killer of amphibians in our marshlands.

"When we eat it we are inoculated, so it equips you to kiss a frog and protect it from fungus."

It's a synergy between environmental lessons and healthy eating not offered by those trendiest purveyors of the mobile food, slow food or any other movement of the moment. 




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