Playing Food

Parents traditionally teach their children not to play with their food. Tomm Velthuis now adds a playful, confrontational twist to this classic parenting mantra. Hoping to cultivate a better understanding of where the food on our plates comes from, he designed a toy farm highlighting the unsustainable reality of the meat industry. The wooden set, called Playing Food, comes complete with 200 pigs, the enormous amounts of food required to fatten them up, the trees that must be cleared for feed crops, and the acid rain caused by the pigs’ manure. It’s factory farming packaged as an ‘innocent’ childhood toy. The message is unmistakable.