Sugar Catcher is an innovative application designed to assist consumers in identifying and discovering unexpectedly sugary foods during their supermarket shopping experiences. In an era where the health implications of sugary foods are increasingly concerning, and the marketing and packaging strategies employed by businesses remain largely unregulated and unchanged, the challenge for consumers to accurately gauge the level of added sugar in their purchases has never been greater. This difficulty makes it especially challenging for individuals to choose processed foods that align with their health needs and dietary requirements. Sugar Catcher addresses this issue by empowering consumers with the knowledge to make informed choices, thereby bridging the gap between perceived and actual sugar content in their diets.
Sugar, historically coveted for its sweetness, played a significant role in early human evolution and societal development, with early primates evolving a taste for fruit and honey becoming a symbol of power in ancient societies. Its allure in medieval Europe contributed to the growth of slavery linked to sugar cultivation.
The Industrial Revolution saw sugar production skyrocket, integrating sugar into global trade and diets. Concerns over sugar's role in obesity emerged notably after the death of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, prompting the Sugar Association to fund research to deflect blame.
In the 21st century, the global obesity crisis and related health issues have led to a reevaluation of sugar consumption, giving rise to new market trends like "low sugar" and "healthy" food options.
Humans are naturally drawn to sweet foods because our evolutionary history has programmed us to use sugars as a crucial energy source. In the challenging survival conditions faced by our ancestors, sugar was a rare commodity, making the brain reward the consumption of sweet tastes, akin to a much-needed boost in the early stages of human existence. This preference for sweetness was essentially a survival advantage, ensuring that those with a sweet tooth had better chances of survival in times of limited energy resources, a trait that was favorably noted and passed down through our genes.
The death of President Eisenhower of a heart attack in 1969 sparked concern about chronic disease. Some scientists, especially British scientists, began to remain skeptical of sugar, the most famous skeptic being John Yudkin. The British Sugar Bureau dismissed Yudkin’s claims about sugar as “emotional assertions”; the World Sugar Research Organisation called his book “science fiction”.
For 40 years, the sugar industry’s priority has been to shed doubt on studies suggesting that its product makes people sick. The Sugar Association has collected large sums of money from The Sugar Industry Sugar Breand to fund (bribe) nutritionists in government departments, nutrition research institutes and leading nutrition agencies in the United States. When world health experts dared to recommend that people eat less sugar, the industry asked federal officials to intervene. the USDA’s research into sugar’s health effects had ceased, and the FDA’s take on sugar had become conventional wisdom, influencing a generation’s worth of key publications on diet and health.
Food companies follow the relevant legislation for food labeling, explaining the presence of sugar to consumers by having complex textual data. They use a sophisticated and precise approach to raise the bar for reading food labels.
Consumers need to read and understand food labels on their own, using their knowledge of nutritional calculations, the detailed regulations set by food labels, and their knowledge of their own needs, to gauge the extent to which sugar is harmful to their bodies. In this process, businesses amplify the complexity of the science, and as people's perceptions multiply new sugar synonyms, ultimately making it impossible for consumers to find the only criteria to judge the amount of sugar / will be the degree of health.
Through analysis, the consumer's goal is simply to understand the true sugar information in the food and make a judgment based on their needs. Compared to precise but weakly perceived information, the degree description and providing a strong perceived information experience I think will be more effective for sugar consumption decision.
Starting from the list of food ingredients: "Is the food healthy and sugar free?" using strong perceived information experience and degree description to let target users understand the sugar content of food.
As a solution, we attempted to combine music and product because it is a concept of speculative design. We use the method of music to represent the contents of the food ingredient list. At the same time, we will also provide some tactile clues.
