pundo3000: advertising versus reality.

Deep down in our dark, carb-laden, fast-food munching hearts we all knew this to be true, but sometimes seeing the evidence laid out before us is a little bit hard to swallow. (That was punny, I realize, but I couldn’t stop myself…)

In pundo3000.com‘s “Werbung Gegen Realität” (Advertising Versus Reality), they’ve taken 100 (sometimes incredibly odd looking) German food products and given us a direct comparison of their packaging next to what was actually inside. I mean, sure, nobody really expects their Heringssalat to be as totally filled with juicy bits of fresh herring as is portrayed on the box, but shouldn’t it at least be approximately the same colour?

When you open your Heringssalat and it’s a bright shade of creamy mauve, it’s time to throw that shit away. Plus, you know that your Zwiebel-Hackbraten just won’t taste the same without those succulent grillmarks on whatever appears to have been intended to be a steak of some kind. If it had grillmarks, we’d know it was meant to be meat. C’mon people – where are the damn GRILLMARKS?!?!

I’m also a little suspicious of why my kohlwurst has sunk to the bottom of my Grünkohl. I like my wursts to be a little more buoyant…

You can check out the entire 100 products in all their glory here, but these are three of the more heinous ones. This Entenfleisch, Rinderroulade, and Schlemmergulasch ain’t how Grandma used to make it…

I also found a video hyping the project (complete with a culturally misunderstood quasi-old skool hip hop scratch soundtrack – I’d say the intention was some kind of irony, but I’m pretty sure Germany’s taste in music just blows…)

Via the kick ass The Denver Egotist via Funtasticus

wild bunch & co.

I’m a sucker for anything that comes in a pretty bottle. And Wild Bunch & Co. juice is one of the prettiest I’ve seen in a long while.

This Singapore-based company is definitely taking juice high end. Not only do the bottles look hot enough to have perfume in them, but their stuff is 100% organic  and has cute names like Easy Peazy, Savage Cabbage, Iron Maiden, and Beet It.

If you’re in Singapore you can take a sunlit morning jaunt to their retail location for a shot of fresh-pressed Wheatgrass juice. If you’re not in Singapore (like most of us) you’re screwed though. On the flip side, if you live in Singapore and are independently wealthy you’re laughing, cause juice this awesome doesn’t come cheap though. For about CAD $175 a month they’ll make you 250mls of personally-ordered juice per day, deliver it to your office or house, and pick up the empties for recycling.

agata jaworska: made in transit + gropak.

One of my favourite things in the world are those Boston leaf lettuces – the ones that come with the little piece of moist dirt wrapped around the roots so that the lettuce is actually still growing a little. Despite the fact that it’s travelled from Boston in a plastic box, it tastes fresher and more alive than something that’s been totally separated from it’s growth source.

I’m also assuming Boston lettuce comes from Boston, but that could be a big assumption.

An evolution in the growing idea of sustainability during transit is the Gropak for Made in Transit. Designed by Poland-born, Canada-raised, and now Netherlands-based designer Agata Jaworska, this packaging prototype is designed so that the oyster mushrooms inside would actually grow during shipping and be harvested by the consumer just before eating. Fresh. We all know, even though we don’t like to think about it, that food slowly starts to die as soon as it’s harvested, so Made in Transit looks at ways to create growth during the entire supply chain process.

Agata’s a little bit brilliant, and she’s even got a funky little vid to explain the whole scheme behind Made in Transit: