The Future of the Grocery Store

A World without Branding

We are constantly bombarded by unhealthy food advertising through billboards, media and attractive packaging. Disguised by a thin veil of feigned self autonomy, we crave the high sugar, high fat, and high sodium foods we see on shelves. For children, this effect is multiplied substantially, both through children’s unbridled desires and through food advertising that directly targets youth.

But what if we lived in a future where the government imposed strict regulations on food companies to decrease their manipulation on the public and to make transparent the “true costs” of foods? How would you feel if you walked into a grocery store and all packaged goods now came in white standardized packaging, separated by clear labelling for whole foods, processed foods, and ultra processed foods? Advertising would become obsolete, and food brands would have to elevate the content of their products to compete, emphasizing sustainability and natural food processing. Whole foods would be cheaper and therefore more accessible to the public, while highly processed foods would be taxed heavily and prohibited to be sold to minors. It would become an individual’s duty to stay healthy and eat responsibly for the good of the collective community, and those who don’t conform would be shamed.

The brief

Childhood obesity is on the rise all around the world. In the UK, 1 in 3 children are overweight or obese. We may ask ourselves, how did things get this way? And more importantly, how do we get things to change? Partnering with BiteBack 2030, a charity created to reduce childhood obesity in half by 2030, our role as designers was to create a future where this goal could actually be realized, either through drastic or more subtle means.

To take on this brief, we compiled a perfect complement of skills: an international mix of strategists, creatives, and makers. Through a 10-week discovery, our team used speculative design to understand the current context of the urban food landscape and its toll on childhood obesity. Our final goal was to create a project that could open discussion on what the future of food could look like. We started our journey by horizon scanning for trends, drivers and weak signals that could influence the future of food and society. Positioning our project within a future scenario that has been researched by the government, we chose to explore a future where social responsibility is held over individual responsibility, and society and government creates strategies to anticipate and plan for challenges, rather than reacting and mitigating challenges as they come.

We quickly discovered how very simple it was to drift into utopian or dystopian means to achieve our future, each time having to take a step back and try another route. After exploring many dead-ends, rabbit holes, and doors to alternative futures, we settled on a What if… question to build our future around: What if grocery stores debranded all food packaging and allowed consumers to make informed choices around healthy and sustainable food options?

Context of the Future

In order for our future concept to exist, we realized that the following aspects must be realized in the future:

• Political awareness from the public and a willingness to promote policies that benefit citizens rather than solely company profit.
• Policies to regulate and provide guidelines for brands to avoid mass manipulation and to specify the meaning of “sustainability”. Currently, many companies put together CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) plans simply to make their brands more attractive. By developing stronger policies, the government can guarantee transparency in the information that consumers receive.
• Technological collaboration and standardization of packaging will happen across all different products and brands that are in the market. This will require consensus from businesses and technologies to give all companies the same opportunities to comply.
• Research to create better ways of measuring sustainable impact and presenting data around climate change to the public. When designing our prototypes, we realized how difficult it was to measure the CO2 impact of some products. Granular data that is inclusive to the public will be extremely important and necessary. Research will need to be able to show our individual footprints connected to our purchasing behaviors, which will raise awareness and help people to understand their roles in affecting climate change.
• Money and the economy will also play a key role. In our concept, we create a world in which healthy products & sustainable products are cheaper. This will require big corporations to adapt their supply chains to produce what some environmentalist entrepreneurs are producing at low scale but high cost. Also, incentives will go towards food products that makes consumers feel good and stay healthy. The right to be healthy and not just the privilege to do so will be emphasized.

Once we created the context, we still had to craft the world around this future and choose how we could showcase it in an accessible and tangible way. To do this, we came up with quick prototypes that we then tested with students and tutors at LCC (London College of Communication). In this first test, we showed users three kinds of packaging — original packaging, white packaging and transparent packaging. By asking users which packaging they prefered and why, we gained valuable insights for our final iteration in terms of packaging shapes and potential reactions towards regulation.

We also collaborated with members of the BiteBack youth board to better understand the causes they care about and why. One participant from the youth board identified causes and reasons that would make her change her mind and her food choices. Also, we discovered that it was very difficult for her to differentiate unhealthy food from healthy food, further confirming to us the murkiness of what healthy versus unhealthy really means. Finally, we asked her to what extent would she like government regulation on food to become real in her world.

With the feedback we received from prototyping and a critique session with our tutors, we were ready to hammer down on what our products would look like and what information was most meaningful to showcase.

The Final Product

The Final Product

Each piece of our exhibition was made with intention and meant to convey one or more of the concepts below.

Government Regulation

• The products that we created have been debranded by government restrictions, only showing relevant and vetted information that will inform choices.
• Price of products. Prices of whole foods and processed foods (foods that have been processed but are still good for your health) are low compared to ultra-processed foods.
• Age restriction on ultra-processed foods. As our future will vehemently battle childhood obesity, the government will restrict minors from buying junk food, similar to present protocols around cigarettes and alcohol.
• No junk food signs on the underground. Junk food has become synonymous with other vices, such as smoking, that are looked down upon by the general public and controlled by government policies.

Social Responsibility

• Public shaming through the transparent shopping bag. Everyone will be able to see your shopping choices, and may judge you if you have ultra processed foods in your bag.
• Government sanctioned public health campaign reprimands people against eating ultra-processed foods and compromising collective community health and resources.
• Even messaging on the receipt from the grocery store thanks customers for choosing to buy healthy foods over ultra-processed foods.

Health First

• Foods are simply labelled as whole foods, processed foods, and ultra-processed foods. This classification came from our discussion on what healthy and unhealthy meant, and how arbitrary nutritional information on packaging often is. All bodies are wired differently and process food differently, what is “too many calories” for one person is not the same for another. In this case, whole foods and processed foods are deemed healthier due to the amount of processing that they have received. Our bodies have been engineered over thousands of years to process whole foods and grains, and eating overly processed foods may be one reason why our health is being affected.
• Healthy food (whole and processed foods) is cheaper than unhealthy food (ultra-processed foods). Through our prototyping feedback, we found that price point was an important factor for people when choosing food options. This also symbolizes a pushback against issues that are particulary prevalent between food and poverty, such as food deserts and food insecurity.
• Get rewards if you buy whole and processed foods. This rewards program will give you savings for future groceries, further promoting the purchase of healthy foods and is hinted at on the receipt.
• Whole foods are in glass, symbolizing that you get what you see. On the other hand, processed and ultraprocessed foods are hidden behind monotonous packaging, reflecting the processing that has changed whole foods into something less recognizable.
• Ultra processed foods are available in smaller serving sizes, and are able to take up less shelf space. This has to do with current methods of advertising that can influence what and how much food we choose to buy. Thinking about this in fast food logic, we often buy fast food because it can be seen as a “bargain”, we get a lot of food with a little money.

Sustainability

• Through government packaging information. Each product on the shelf gives information on its carbon footprint
• Through recyclable packaging. We imagine in this future, that single-use plastic packaging as been banned by the government.
• Through the carbon footprint calculated on your receipt, suggesting a quota for how much carbon an individual is contributing to through their food choices.
• Tesco poster suggests that there will be more extreme weather events due to climate change, and businesses and corporations must do their part to adhere to government regulations and maintain customer loyalty.

As our global population’s obesity levels grow at an alarming rate, as well as cases of diabetes, high blood pressure and other morbidities, we must stare at our food systems in the face and question what must be changed. What we have presented to you may have been a future that we envisioned, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a future that we would prefer. We invite you into this vignette of the future and to contemplate on what you would like to see in the future of our food.

Despite the many hurdles we faced navigating through the unchartered waters of speculative design, each of us gained valuable lessons that we will take into our own future design practices and mindsets.

Laura

This project made me realize the impact of future design has to raise questions and make tangible society’s desires. As humans we want things, we want equality, regulation, and protection of the earth but we are unable to picture how that would look and what it would require from all of us. I love future design because it gives you the possibility to convert words into something tangible, make agreements based to create a preferable future. I am convinced of its power and I would work hard to bring it to Latin America where we largely needed it! Maybe by seeing our futures we would not elect the same corrupt people anymore!

Ruchika

Through the course as a team tutors kept reminding us to not solve problems but just let our imagination run wild. This was challenging and exciting at the same time and one of my favorite parts of the unit. Also, I really like that we had uninhibited ideas and no limits or constraints. As a team we came up with bizarre ideas and we worked together to make them viable. I enjoyed this kind of working because that means all ideas are accepted. We were able to think like kids and think that anything is possible and then see how we can make it work. Finally, imagining the future and speculating how things will change and which shape they would take, was exhilarating and extremely powerful.

Prang

After completing this project, it made me realise how important it is to eat the right food because everything you eat, it is going to affect your future society. It also raised awareness about food in the way that I have never known before. It changes the perspective of processed and ultra-processed food. It is no longer food that I would like to have anymore, so this project has changed my eating behaviour. For me, the future design is appealing. I can do whatever I want as it might be impossible for now, but it might happen in the future. I had fun and got new experiences along the process, and I am looking forward to what is going to happen in the near future!

Seth

I never cared about obesity before, because I would blame people’s laziness and lack of self-control instantly. However, when I was doing this project, I talked with people, read articles. I found this is a severe problem which is related to the food industry and the side effect of social progress. And I think this problem will become worse if the government doesn’t intervene in it. For example, the parents are the first generation that is affected by the junk food industry, if they don’t know how to deal with the junk food problem, how can we ask them to raise their children right? I hope to raise people’s awareness through our design, and shift the current situation a little bit.

Yi

TEAM E!