AWARD YEAR
2021
CATEGORY
Play & Learning
GOALS
Sustainable Cities & Communities, Responsible Consumption & Production
KEYWORDS
food, sustainable food , alternative foods
COUNTRY
Austria
DESIGNED BY
Julia Schwarz
WEBSITE
https://unseen-edible.com/
Unseen Edible
Food products using one of the oldest living organism on earth: lichen.
When food stops growing, population increases and climate gets more extreme - which alternatives do we have?
Researchers prognose a coming food shortage caused by overpopulation and extreme climate. Having a closer look at what people ate in famine times or for survival, lichen showed up several times. Starving people weren’t dying anymore and they didn’t have even huge deficiency symptoms.
The Unseen Edible. Lichen is everywhere around us but still unknown.
Lichen are confused with moss. But there is a difference, while moss has nearly 0 nutritional value, lichen has super powers - it is even used in medicine. Through research on different alternative food sources lichen showed next to algae and insects a great potential. Lichen is a symbiosis of fungi and algae ....it is very resistant - it could even grow on Mars.
This film is a speculative glimpse of a world where lichen is already implemented as a food supply.