Contextual Essay for future protein food

Blogs+prediction videos:

https://lilileah.wordpress.com/2019/06/14/plant-based-meat-ep-1/

https://lilileah.wordpress.com/2019/06/15/lab-grown-meat-ep-2/

https://lilileah.wordpress.com/2019/06/16/insects-protein-ep-3/

Concept:

My digital artefact is about the future of protein food in the short-term (3 years), medium-term( 20 years) and long-term (100 years). Since the technology developing speed and the natural environment is and will be different, so I have mainly discussed one animal protein alternative for each period, which is plant-based meat, cultured meat and insects respectively for each period.

Methodology：

The whole blog series starts with a simple but clear explanation about why we need meat substitutes. What is the main alternative that the public will consume in 3 years, 20 years and 100 years, I also listed the pros and cons of each meat alternative for each period.

I originally planned to film ‘what I eat in a day’ style video to show my prediction about future protein food. However, I later found out that it would be very difficult. So I narrowed down the theme of videos to solely focus on the protein food before cooked and ready to serve. The imagination of the food in my videos were based on, A, the comments from Reddit; B, all the news, industrial and academical reports I have read; and C, my personal imagination.

What can be improved:

According to the results from my BCM112 DA (I posted the cooking process on both Instagram and YouTube, and I achieved at least ten times more views from Instagram), I think the short videos can attract more Instagram users rather than Youtube lovers. So for the future DA, I will definitely post pictures and photos on Instagram to get more feedback from the audience.

Utility:

The Pitch and Beta feedbacks from my peers and tutor all regarded my project’s utility as positive, as people need food to provide energy for all activities and to survive. Vegetarian may have more interests in my first blog because plant-based and meatless meat alternative is considered as one of the essential future protein.

All meat lovers will carry the interests to read all the blogs (I, personally, really enjoyed the researching part), since we all want to know what will happen if the price of naturally grown livestock reach a high peak price, will the taste and flavor be still the same, how to be sustainable while enjoy the meat.

What can be improved:

I mainly used the Reddit to engage with my audience, but I feel this method also have some limitations. Even though I really appreciate all the replies from AskReddit, there are still some people who answer the question in the ‘try to be funny but not responsible’ way. I think as long as I ask questions online, this situation can’t be avoided. But I will try to ask more questions from different angles at a different time for the next time.

Research Background:

I have settled down the main topic for all three blogs for a different period, which makes the research process easier.

Then I have used many reliable references and statistics from governments and authorities, which, I think, is a great way to address the importance for my target audience to think about what meat (or meat-alike) will be consumed in the future, even for the next generation.

For the final blog, thanks to feedback from the Pitch, I turned to use sci-fi films to expand my prediction, and finally decided to focus on Insects. A report link sent by a classmate from the live-tweeting session is also very helpful.

Overall Success

I think the three blogs can give the reader a clear idea about what types of future protein they can expect for a different time period and why they will be the main alternatives. The videos would be fun to watch and would add a bit of entertainment to the description style blog.

Overall Limitation

I think the primary limitation comes from me; I underestimated the time needed for the research stage. It also would be better if I successfully manage to collect enough feedback about people’s imagination of the future meat.