WUR at Lowlands: radical food scenarios and uncomfortable choices

Festival Lowlands again this year has a science corner with surveys and research that visitors can participate in. For instance, they can test their attractiveness to mosquitoes or go for a ‘number two’ on a golden Trump toilet for research on nutrition and gut flora.

In collaboration with the National Science Agenda, consumption sociologist Wertheim-Heck will hold several Free Lunch Free sessions every day, twice an hour between 12:00-20:00, on the design of our food society. It will involve an audiovisual screening of radical 'What if...?' scenarios with a quiz based on dilemmas. Each dilemma involves an 'uncomfortable' choice.

For example, what if we no longer had to eat 'normal' food and could get all the necessary nutrients from a pill or tube? Or what if sustainable and healthy food was accessible for free? Wertheim-Heck: "In the context of sustainability, we need imagination, imagining scenarios that we might not think entirely possible, but that help us think in new possibilities: towards a (radical) new normal."

The experiment is part of the project Transition to a Sustainable Food System and specifically the section Future Scenarios from a Consumption Perspective. Wertheim-Heck is also on the VPRO Tegenlicht Talkshow, on Saturday the 19th at 14:20 in the Echo tent at Lowlands.