Looking for an unusual wedding banquet? I may have found the answer for you- Marije Vogelzang and her food laboratory.

While contemplating the greater joys of food, I remembered hearing Marije Vogelzang speak at the annual PopTech conference last year. This amazing designer has created her own genre for food as art: Eating Design. After studying product design and worried about the wasteful use of materials, this Dutch designer turned to food. Viewing food as already perfectly designed by nature, she began focusing on creating unique and meaningful eating experiences.

Vogelzang’s edible art projects take on many forms, including installations, performance, and event catering. In every case, she explores cultural preconceptions of food, and attempts to change prior experiences or associations with what’s being eaten. At one catering venue for a large holiday dinner party, the designer took the tablecloth and hung the sides up instead of down, creating slits so diners were encompassed in this tent-like construction, transforming the relationship of the eaters to one another and to their food.

Color often becomes a prominent focus in Vogelzang’s work. In a project working with kids and their food perceptions, she arranged a series of healthy snacks according to color, and each color was associated with a feeling or meaning, such as red=energy or yellow=friends. Children then chose their snacks based on a desire for “happiness” or “energy” as opposed to the food itself, thereby removing their previous hesitancy or negativity toward healthy foods.

Other works include spoons made of sugar that melt into your coffee, candy “guns” that are meant to raise awareness that sugar is bad for you, and garden cress grown on clothing that can be used to garnish cocktails.

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Given a continued fascination with the daikon, I recently made a recipe from Food and Wine magazine, which involved two hours of cooking and two minutes of eating. It was at this moment that I began to question my commitment to gourmet food. Or at least, preparing it for myself after yet another 10pm dinner, and purple, beet stained hands.

The inspiration this time was two-fold. First, I’d never tried anything like it, and “the new” is enticing. Secondly, the recipe itself was inspired by an artist and likened to a paintbrush. The photograph was probably what did it. It looked gorgeous!

People like to joke about food porn. Personally, I’m not a big fan of the phrase, but I can certainly understand it as fetish. Food photography has become a real art form and for some of us, looking at it is fodder for goose bumps. It’s a symbol of passion. Sometimes it feels as though the photograph is more important than the food itself.

New York design consultants at Fork & Design have mastered the art of food photography. In fact, artist and photographer, Emilie Baltz, one of the principals at Fork & Design, has taken it to another level with her Gourmet Junk Food. Considering my personal quest for eating only real food, I have to admit that I cringe when viewing these images thinking of the fruit roll-up and Reese’s peanut butter cup ingredients. Still, it turns out you can make just about anything beautiful given a good eye for design. After all, it’s all about the photography.

Image: Emilie Baltz

The post Food as Art, the Rise of Food Photography, and Gourmet Junk Food? appeared first on EcoSalon.