How does an environment affect people’s behaviour? Is there more that designers can do besides ergonomic layouts, well planned storage and provision of cheerful décor? Can the way a space is created encourage healthy eating habits and ways of being?

The answer is yes, in more ways than you might think. It’s possible to design a kitchen that not only supports but encourages healthy eating, in a subtle but effective manner. At the same time, this approach also creates a healthy kitchen that doubles as a wonderful place to spend time.

Here are a few specific ideas to consider, much of it inspired by Michael Pollen’s recent book, In Defence of Food:

• The role of the table as the centre of healthy food habits is far more important than it might appear at first glance. Conversation plays a major role in slowing down eating, adding to the “food experience per bite”. Eating food slowly is effective at reducing over-consumption. According to various studies, it takes the brain 20 minutes to catch up with the stomach. Delaying the intake of food with conversation and pauses, such as serving a new course, allows the body the has time to give you a signal of fullness. In addition, it helps us to go for quality foods, rather than quantity. In turn, this creates greater interest in the food itself and greater enthusiasm for taking the time and trouble to prepare it.
• A well-positioned, handsome table with an atmosphere of enjoyable sociability, set in sunlight or candlelight, can also make a big difference. With a belief that getting together is worth it – much better than eating alone with nothing but the TV for company – then you can give round one to the ‘designed’ environment. It’s no accident that the breakfast nook is a common request from our clients. It’s a protected and cosy spot for consuming civilised meals.
• A full meal, eaten regularly, reduces snacking. The formality of being at a table, consideration for others and sociability of manners, turns the meal into a shared experience. The French serve modest portions, controlling plating size, which in turn sends the right visual cues. This is because most people have a ‘unit bias,’ according to psychologist Paul Rozin. He explains that they take their cues from what is on the plate, not what they necessarily want to eat.

Stay tuned for installments 2 and 3 for more tips on “Cooking & Furniture” and more!

One of the core tenets of our design philosophy at JG Studios is that a happy kitchen is the central ingredient in the recipe for a happy home. And to create a happy kitchen, you need to cater to the youngest members of the family by creating a safe, warm space where they can learn the joys of preparing food – not to mention the fun of making a mess that mom gets to clean up afterwards! (Can you say “Food fight!”?)

We’ve recently been in touch with chef Dorette Snover, founder and owner of C’est Si Bon cooking school based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She and her husband opened the doors to C’est si Bon after Hurricane Fran destroyed their old kitchen in 1997. When the family completed rebuilding the kitchen the next summer, they invited some of their son’s friends for a week of cooking.

“We combed the nearby woods for blackberries for luscious pies, and took [the kids] on adventures to goat-cheese farms…The last night we invited their parents to come to dinner and enjoy a meal cooked from scratch,” Dorette explains.

That experience led her to a new career in cooking with kids. “Eleven years later, we teach over 160 young people in the Kid-Chef day camps and over 50 in the Teen-Chef tours,” Dorette says.

In addition to residential and day camps in North Carolina, C’est si Bon offers three culinary tours for teens in Provence, the Loire Valley and Paris. Students attend cooking classes with local chefs, shop for ingredients at open-air markets and visit local cheese artisans and beekeepers.

Dorette’s approach to food is reminiscent of our approach to kitchen design, and both of us incorporate philosophies such as the slow food movement into our work. For example, provenance, which is so important to food, applies equally to physical things. Knowing where your furniture is made, being able to see it constructed, using eco-sourced materials, good craftspeople and in preferably smaller, well-managed workshops, applies the Slow Food principles to the making of things. (For more on this subject, see Johnny’s post on “Slow Kitchens”).

We’re putting together some tips on cooking with kids – and how to create kitchens for kids! As one of our clients, Tiffany Wood, told the Financial Times in a recent piece on curvy kitchens (get the whole scoop here), the extra large work spaces we installed in her kitchen lend themselves to family bonding over food: “I have three children and they have countless cousins, and they all love to cook. They come and make pancakes crowded round the great big worktops - I can squeeze in 12 children round those curves.”

Stay tuned for more on how to squeeze more children ’round your own cooking spaces.

Cast iron casserole with wooden handle first made by Iitala in 1960. Once celebrated on a Finnish postage stamp. Combining design usability with a traditional cast iron pot, Timo Sarpaneva’s inspiration came from his blacksmith grandfather. Image from Iitala.

The recession is closing in on minimalism. Sleek, cool, mono-aesthetics for people who don’t want to actually live in their homes is so last year. Goodbye as well to souless power kitchens where any signs of life are verboten. There are no remnants of actual cooking, with everything cleared up before you can say, “We’ve had a great dinner.”

Minimalism costs a lot. Less is meant to be much, much more and the punters want you to know it, the reverse of what you would hope. Hidden hinges, skirting boards, massive wall to ceiling cupboards, wide floor boards, frameless doors and windows do not come cheaply. It’s a statement of control and the power to impress. I must admit that one wants order if the chaos and clutter become too invasive, but it only takes a single glance at a Russian Oligarch style banker penthouse apartment and I quickly want my clutter back. These swanky pads are destined for people who don’t want homes but swanky hotel rooms, fully owned but barely lived in. If these minimalist interiors were once our aspirational home models, they are no longer.

All of this is not an attack on modernism, but merely a realisation that its true heart lies in a more accommodating and instinctual approach. When you visit Charles and Ray Eames’ Case Study house in the Palisades, you get a full taste of how they lived with found objects adorning walls and tables, a huge low level trolley on which sits a portable jungle – moved around the room according to mood. You can feel how much they loved living there.  Minimalism is grand standing for interior designers and frustrated architects who made an alliance with overly rich domestic control freaks. Letting designers impose a strong style statement is only justifiable if it makes people feel comfortable. In these troubled economic times, I suspect we are going to loose our interest in high status interiors and go for simpler, instinctual designs that cater to basics, such as functional well-made furniture, creating the right ambience with access to outdoors, sunlight, natural materials, and things handmade to last.  IKEA stuff that looks great but quickly deteriorates seems wasteful and unecological.  We will learn to accept that things will wear, and should be worthy of repair.  There will still be room for pattern and decoration and texture, but it will be chosen more for provenance and mood and less for fashion.

What could come out of this financial crisis that would be good is support for artisans in all aspects of home renovation, with a concomitant desire for authenticity and less bling, more confident personal expression, the use of found objects, expanding the use of junk shops and repairing things. Careful choice exercised whilst purchasing things will be allied to the end of anti-mess behaviour at home and the minimalist lifestyle.