Community Nutrition Engagement Officer Hannah Rohrlach has celebrated a number of successful personal endeavours this year, challenging Adelaide audiences to consider the future of food in Australia. Her creative engagement start-up Post Dining, co-founded with Stephanie Daughtry, re-imagines the way the people interact with food and each other. Taking the form of experimental dining with a strong conceptual underpinning, a key theme in 2017 has been exploring how we can adapt what we eat to possible future environments.
Across the year, Post Dining engaged audiences in adaptations of the Australian Academy of Science’s four archetype scenarios of 2050, considering how our diets might be affected by different environmental outcomes. This began as playful dining narrative in the Adelaide Fringe in March, being awarded a John Chattaway weekly award for innovation following a sold-out weekend of events. Exploring one of the four themes in more depth, Hannah designed a ‘Water Footprint Canapes’ experience which teaches the concept in a very tangible way; serving sizes of various meat and vegetarian canapes are measured out according to the water that is used in the food production, and guests subsequently barter for their food using water as a currency. This educational food experience was exercised at the Dietetics Association of Australian SA Branch ‘Nutrition and Sustainability’ professional development day in July.
Post Dining was then asked to be part of the program launch of Open State in August, a festival of innovation, collaboration, ideas and enterprise in South Australia. Hannah and Steph presented the future food concept to over 550 guests at the Adelaide Oval, introducing the idea of nutritious and sustainable native foods, edible insects, flowers and weeds, following which everyone was offered some edible insects foods to taste. In September, Hannah and Steph continued introducing the public to these foods during a three-week residency in the Adelaide Central Market. This opportunity allowed hundreds of people from across the state and country to learn about and try edible crickets, mealworms, Australian native green ants and other sustainable and local native foods such as lemon myrtle, quandongs, wattleseed and kangaroo.