Prototyping Inclusive Food with Refugees in Japan

Description:

While there is a trend for developing new food materials such as insect protein or lab-grown meat, we believe that taste, accessibility, and sustainability are three components essential to creating future food; components embodied in Japanese food culture. Further, “Umami” in Japanese cuisine is often extracted from vegetables and seafood, making it accessible to pescatarians, Muslims, and others of varying eating habits. We seek to design our ideal “Inclusive Food” by incorporating elements of Japanese food culture and by using umami as a catalyst to combine and extract the flavors of varying recipes of newcomers, such as refugees and immigrants. We will introduce this new food prototyping story and share our insights on building a diverse future scenario through food culture.