Five jump! future food innovation provocations from our trip to Litfest 2016.

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Litfest’16Five jump! Future Food Innovation Provocations
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Five jump! provocations for the future of food innovation from Litfest 2016.
1.
Gut
Instincts
2.
Natural
Anarchy
3.
Conflict
Cooking
4.
Wild
Gambling
5.
Waste
Rebellion
1. Here is our Litfest Future Junkie Report from a weekend spent at Litfest 2016 – a revolutionary food festival. Our Litfest
experience has highlighted to us five future food provocations.
2. Litfest is the Kerrygold Ballymaloe Literary Festival of Food and Wine. The event is attended by farmers, chefs, foodies and
producers from around the world. The weekend is filled with intriguing discussions, incredible knowledge, music and a
cornucopia of food and wine.
3. jump!ers spent the weekend at Litfest in a series of eye opening short talks and presentations under the title “Our Food –
What’s the Story?”. The tagline of the festival was “Local Hero, Global Hero”, emphasising the need for ground level activism
to achieve global change. This message carried through the talks and presentations we heard throughout the weekend.
4. The themes we saw and heard via talks, demonstrations and food stalls inspired these five food innovation provocations:
We’ll introduce you to these themes and summarise with some innovation provocations!
Bon Appetito 

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1.Gut Instincts
Speaker: Professor Ted Dinan, University College Cork
discussed the relationship between our gut and our
psychological well being.
Here’s our summary:
People are now talking about ‘Psychobiotics’, probiotics with a positive mental health boost. This
is about using bacteria to regulate our mental health.
Microbiota have a significant effect on mental and emotional health regulation. A lack of
tryptophan produced by gut bacteria can lead to depression. Tryptophan encourages the growth
of new neurons and has a huge effect on serotonin and melatonin. Probiotics like Biffidobacterium
and Lactobascilli have been seen in some studies to have a huge influence on the amount of
Tryptophan in the gut.
And how best to grow these probiotics? The prebiotic Inulin enhances the growth and activities of
symbiotic bacteria, while also slowing the growth of or activities of certain pathogenic bacteria. It
also has capacity to lower cortisol – the hormone associated with stress.
Breast milk, seaweeds and spirulina, Jerusalem artichokes, bananas, garlic, leeks, onions, and
asparagus are some of the foods in which you can find inulin. The best way to diversify our
microbiota to age healthily is by enjoying a broad diet. Also – in having less microbiota, more
calories are absorbed into the body, therefore potentially having benefits for managing rising
obesity levels.
Numerous stalls and food producers were promoting
probiotic products at Litfest.
We tried a mocktail from ‘My Goodness’ - an ethical,
health focused business that specialises in vegan, raw,
sugar free and fermented probiotic products.
Delicious!
The benefits of our physical gut health and microbiota, the
ecological community of good and bad bacteria that share our
body space, is predicted to become increasingly important over
the coming months. Our ‘gut health’ is said to have a huge part to
play in our emotional wellbeing as well as our ability to use our gut
instincts to make decisions.
This interest in gut health extends to soil and agriculture as well as
humans, with new research highlighting the need to maintain
natural bacteria and gut health of the fields and the environment.
Artificial eating and farming decreases both human and the
environments natural bacteria with a knock on effect for our primal
instincts and feelings.

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We felt the rising of a ‘food war’ while we were at Litfest. Food
is expected to, and will become, a new front for activism
and change.
Anarchy was in the air from daring business models to
guerrilla gardening, with a thirst to take matters into your
own hands. Current food and environmental systems feel
harmful and unsustainable, as such people are devising
creative and innovative ways to disrupt the system.
Ari spoke about the “Zingerman’s model’’ of
working. This model begins with a commitment to
Open Book Management and opportunities for
employee ownership. Their long-term vision is a
radically different growth model, a community of
businesses: each unique, each contributing to the
success of the others and each with managing
partners who have an equity stake and run the
day-to-day operations.
Guerrilla gardening – There’s a growing number
of “rurbanites” people who have a passion for
the countryside but no intention of leaving the
city. Litfest encourages people to throw
seedbombs into neglected parts of the city.
Making seedbombs:
Seed bombs consist of a variety of
different seeds rolled within a ball of clay,
preferably volcanic pyroclastic red clay. Into this
medium various additives may be included, such
as compost. These are placed around the seeds,
at the centre of the ball, to
provide microbial inoculants. Cotton-fibres or
liquefied paper are sometimes mixed into the
clay in order to strengthen it, and a liquefied
paper mash can be coated on the outside to
further protect the clay ball during sowing by
throwing, or in particularly harsh habitats.
Speaker: A Lapsed Anarchist Ari
Weinzweig CEO and co- founder of
Zingerman's Deli
2.Natural Anarchy

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With the current state of global affairs, from immigration crisis to
Brexit, the role of food in ‘war’ time was a prominent discussion
topic. We heard from cooks, producers and activists who
believe food can help bring people together.
Ventures like ‘Conflict Kitchen’ and ‘Souk El Tayeb’ invite
people from conflicting countries or cultures to eat and
converse together over food. They hope to instigate healthy
conversation and debate, and give people a better
understanding of the ‘other’.
Speaker: Author of Food in a
Warzone and founder of the
Souk El Tayeb farmer's market in
Beirut, Kamal Mouzawak,
shared his experiences with us.
Kamal created the first farmers’ market in
Beirut, Souk el-Tayeb, which preserves food
traditions and the culture of sustainable
agriculture in Lebanon. In a country that has
been divided along ethnic and religious lines
for decades. According to Mouzawak, “in a
country as divided as Lebanon, nothing can
bring people together as much as the land and
food.”
He runs initiatives like ‘Food & Feast’ - one-day
regional festivals that promote coexistence,
preserve Lebanese heritage, and enhance a
better understanding of the “other” to promote
reconciliation in Lebanon.
3. Conflict Cooking
Tawlet, a restaurant concept by Souk
follows a similar ethos to the market.
It is an open kitchen, where every day of
the week, a different cook from the family
of the Souk, prepares a typical food from
her region.
Each day there’s a different cook, a
different producer, a different meal, and a
different story.

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The backlash against artificial food production is in full
swing. Farmers and producers alike are starting to feel
the effects of mass production and over reliance on
man made appliances and products.
With nature and the environment, unpredictability and
imperfection is inevitable but there’s a growing need to
embrace and celebrate this if we’re going to create a
sustainable system.
This talk focused on the importance of the ‘hare’s
corner’. This is an old relationship between nature
and agriculture, where a farmer would leave an
uncultivated corner of a field, as cover for the
hare, while keeping nature in balance. This kept
the microbiota in the soil healthy and thriving. As
artificial fertilisers came into use, the hare’s corner
began to disappear. As a result, there was a
decline in soil life – sometimes the microbiology
was found to be lower than 3% organic life, in turn
meaning the nutritional quality of the crops grown
there would be incredibly poor too.
Without the help of artificial fertilisers you run of risk
of failure. This project aims to prove that nature
doesn’t abide by ‘safe’ answers, it’s supposed to
be wild and unpredictable and humans need to
work with it, not against it.
Speakers: The Hare’s
Corner is a project
based outside Kinsale,
co. Cork.
Speaker: Danielle
Nierenberg is an
American activist,
author, journalist and
Founder of Food Tank.
Food Tank is focused on building a global
community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters.
The talk focused on restoring interest and
investment in indigenous crops that may offer a
solution to food insecurity and the increasing loss
of biodiversity. A lot of the investment for crops in
the third world is for crops like wheat, rice and
maize. However Food Tank wants people to take a
chance on indigenous crops that currently have
bad raps for being ‘poor’ mans food or ‘ugly’, in
hopes of improving nutrition and health, local
economies and creating resilience to climate
change, revitalising agricultural biodiversity, and
helping to preserve tradition and culture.
4. Wild Gambling

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There were a lot of big hard hitting facts thrown around at the
event. 30% of all food grown is thrown away. There are 795
million people going hungry. If carbon emissions from
wasted food were a country, it would be the third largest in
the world. To combat this, there is a rising energy around the
zero waste movement.
This is a fast rising theme we’re seeing around food and
drink.
Speaker: Tackling Food
Waste Eoin Mac Cuirc of
The Bia Food Initiative and
Food Cloud
FoodCloud is a community-based social
enterprise that brings food businesses and
charities together with an easy-to-use and
reliable platform, matching those with too
much food with those who have too little.
Speakers: Sometimes You
Dream Out Loud Eric Werner
& Mya Henry from Hartwood
in Mexico talked about
making their dream
restaurant in the jungle a
reality
By necessity, they consider sustainability first
and foremost in all their work and in every
decision at the restaurant. Solar panels power
their lights and music and every other little
thing that keeps the restaurant running.
They break down their waste with zero carbon
footprint, creating 100% organic compost that
is used in regenerating the mangrove
environment and interior farming.
5. Waste Rebellion

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Want to start a Food ‘Revolution’?
5. Waste Rebellion
Future food innovation provocations:
1. Gut Appeal
2. Revolutionary Fervour
3. Conflict Cooking
4. Positive Imperfection
• How are your products placed to champion ‘gut health’ as it rises in profile?
• How can you use ‘gut health’ to inspire people to make better, more
instinctive decisions?
• Feed your customers’ rising revolutionary spirit, what’s your ‘seed bomb’
idea?
• Champion new food revolutionaries; equip them; lead them!
• Can you create new food mash ups born of conflict?
• How can you use food as a vehicle for positive social change?
• Get ready to embrace imperfection, sometimes the best ideas come from the
least expected places.
• Can you turn your imperfections into a positive?
• What are the creative waste opportunities your brand can champion?
• What is your ‘waste statement’?
• How can your brand inspire or lead this movement?
Five jump! provocations for the future of food innovation from Litfest 2016.