The Journey of Food -From Farm to Table - IEDP │ 環境デザイン統合教育プログラム

What Does Food Mean to Us?
After the field work, site observation, and most importantly, tasting locally harvested food every day, we have come to question, “what does food mean to us? Do we enjoy eating the food we have in front of us?”
Simple answer to this question is from its physical aspect; food is the energy source to sustain our lives. But, the experience in Taiki Town unlocked more ways to approach this question. How about its mental and social aspects. We have seen the potential of how food becoming a connector between people and people. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the preparation of meal is rather a long process that involves many “silent dialogues”. This is how we realized that food can be the media to nurture communication, and bring people together with joy. We can easily anticipate lots of conversations like, “where was this ingredient harvested?“, “how was it cooked?“, “this year’s harvest is lower than previous years“, etc., taking place very commonly in Taiki Town. The more voices like so, the stronger the food identity of the region will become.