The World Is My Taco

Where in the world did the contents of this taco come from? "The assignment was part of URBANlab, a program of The California College of the Arts that took place under the guidance of landscape architect David Fletcher and members of the art and design studio Rebar. ... According to the class findings, within a single taco, the ingredients had traveled a total of 64,000 miles ... ." (Read more about it here.) (A bigger more legible version of the map below is here.)

The taco that ate the planet.

"'It was difficult to trace the origins of these foods because of the intense obfuscation by the corporations that produce them,' said Rebar’s John Bela at a recent unveiling of the research at San Francisco’s Studio for Urban Projects. The students spent hours on the phone, spoke to customer representatives in corporate offices and eventually gathered the data necessary to create a map that includes farms, corporate offices, and the exact routes traveled by planes, trucks, and shipping containers.

The taco the group deconstructed was from Juan’s Taco Truck in the city’s Mission District, where every ingredient had been purchased from either Costco or Restaurant Depot, and had been chosen because it was the absolute most economical option possible—making it the taco most people are likely to eat."