Eating is an extraordinary act of trust. We put something made, grown, transported and handled by people we may never meet directly into our bodies — usually without giving it a second thought.

But what makes us trust food?

In this lecture, food designer Marije Vogelzang explores trust through the lens of her work. Using projects and experiments from more than 25 years of working with food and eating, she looks at the signals that make us feel that something is safe, familiar, suspicious, natural or edible in the first place.

Food safety relies on systems, standards, science and control. Yet the experience of safety is also shaped by culture, memory, senses, stories and other people. Something can be perfectly safe and still feel dangerous. Something can feel completely trustworthy and not be safe at all.

What happens in that gap?

By looking at food safety from the perspective of the eater, Vogelzang invites us to think about safety not only as the prevention of risk, but as part of a much larger and surprisingly intimate question:

Why do we dare to take the next bite?