Artist Creates an 8-Course Meal That Reflects the Destruction of Environment
The natural resources of the world are now brimming with discarded plastic waste. Despite the efforts of many altruistic souls to clean them up, they just keep piling on. In a 2020 video, Polish street artist Igor Dobrowolski (@igor.dobrowolski.5) visualized a “food menu inspired by the destruction of the environment.” His version of eight dishes is a clear warning for humans to pay attention to their environment. “If you are helping to create it, you better be prepared to eat it one day,” he wrote.
Sharing the photos of the eight made-up dishes, the concerned artist asked, "What steps do you take to save our environment?" Inspired by the Netflix documentary Chef’s Table, the artist crafted a stunning visualization of eight dishes, giving them his own names based on how they might look in the future. His objective behind creating an alternative menu was to make people think “about the path we are taking as a species and how we interact with the environment.” Shot in the setting of Alriso Risotteria Italiana restaurant with the help of Wings of Cam, the photographs reveal a dreading picture of how plastics have invaded the environment and how excessive plastic pollution that's affecting animals will soon invade the plates of meat-eaters.
The first dish depicted in the visualization is named “Duck Orange with Petrol Jus.” Typically, “Duck Orange” is a classic French dish of roast duck with a sweet and tangy orange sauce, but as Dobrowolski named it, many ducks nowadays are victims of petroleum ingestion. All this petroleum ends up in the water via oil spills from factories that produce plastics. USGS reported that ducklings hatched by ducks who consumed oil-contaminated water were more prone to liver disease and reproductive issues. And if they don’t die, the humans that eat these ducklings will eventually feel poison seeping into their bellies.
The second dish on the artist’s menu was “Fresh from the Net, Crayfish, and Plastic Linguini.” A 2023 study found a ubiquitous presence of microplastics in the digestive tracts of crayfish, providing the first evidence of microplastic accumulation in tail tissue. After examining their gut, gill, and stomach samples, the researchers found traces of microplastic ingestion. “The consumption of such microplastics can have ecotoxicological effects altering crayfish gene expression, enzyme production, and thus metabolic processes,” they wrote in the paper.
The next two dishes in Dobrowolski’s alternative menu included “Asian-inspired chicken broth with zip-tie noodles” and “plastic-fed mussels with bottle top chiffonade.” The numbers synchronize well with this graphic as a 12-inch zip tie can have up to 2 grams of plastic, which, when not disposed of properly, can seep into the waterways and poison marine life. As for the mussels, NOAA’s “Mussel Watch Program” which studies mussels and oysters revealed that mussels in Lake Michigan and other areas had zillions of tiny plastic particles inside their stomachs, which could be a severe problem for people who eat them.
Moving on, the artist served a “carbon-infused ice cream” on the destruction platter followed by “ricotta dumplings with plastic netting.” The remaining dishes included Styrofoam clams and tiger prawns infused with plastic. His blunt depiction of plastic pollution is not an idle threat. Studies have indicated that an average human consumes a steady diet of over 70,000 plastics each year. If they don’t put a full stop to plastic consumption, they may soon be eating poison on their plates. It is scary to think that this poison, a.k.a. plastic, can even disguise itself as a nutritious diet of protein and fat.
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