Journalism students at UC Berkeley spent their summer obsessing about food. The result is The Ration, an online magazine exploring the business of food, nutrition, food deserts and farming.
The stories span a variety of topics and perspectives about growing, selling and eating food, from the science of food addiction to the extravagant social media marketing ploys of chip companies.
Students also tried their hand at designing a food label that would make nutrition information clearer and easier to understand, traced the roots of the superfood industry, and highlighted a corner store that is taking a chance on fruit and vegetables — rather than just candy, cigarrettes and chips.
Meshing old school journalism with new school style, The Ration also includes a number of interactive infographics, like a graph of calories versus cost, a graphic showing the loss of nutrients in vegetables since 1950, and a map of global food spending.
The Ration is also the school's first iPad magazine.
"We wanted to go beyond just celebrating food to learn how it shapes our landscape, culture and economy," Richard Koci Hernandez, assistant professor of New Media at UC Berkeley, wrote in an email.
View the full selection of stories here.
