Lydia Griffin - 2021

Artist's Statement

This project was motivated by my newfound realization for the dependency of humans on unsustainable diets. The quote was taken from an interview of Dr. Eshel on the film “Before the Flood” which was watched for this class. Each of the letters that spell the word “DIET” contains wrappers from one person’s days’ worth of food consumed. I asked a variety of people—a college student, a young adult who gets his food from the food pantry, a junior high student in an affluent home, and a working mom—to make a record of the processed foods they eat in a day. Each of the people surveyed come from different backgrounds and have different circumstances. They aren’t all the same ethnicity and they have varying levels of income. The purpose of this project is to prove that near EVERYONE relies on processed food and animal products in their diet, and that our environment is greatly impacted by our unsustainable agricultural industry.