Natasha’s Law comes into effect from October 2021 and is being introduced to protect allergy sufferers and give them confidence in the food they choose. All food outlets will be required to label foods to ensure allergens are clearly communicated.
The law is named after Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, the teenager who died in 2016 after suffering an allergic reaction to an undeclared ingredient in a prepacked sandwich. The Badminton School Food Committee wanted to be proactive in its response to the implementation of Natasha’s Law, they were keen to have a set of bespoke food allergen icons for the Badminton Dining Hall.
The Committee approached the Art Department for support. A team of ten Year 9 Graphic Designers was formed and they each researched a food allergen and generated rough sketches to explore their ideas, to visually communicate the food group. The way they offered feedback to each other and accepted the constrictive criticism on ways to make the icons more effective was impressive.
Once the roughs were complete, team members moved on to learn how to digitise their designs using Adobe Illustrator. This is a vector-based graphics software which utilised by professional Graphic Designers. The girls learned quickly and were soon handling the Illustrator tools with confidence!
The set of 14 Badminton bespoke food allergen icons will hopefully be ready for display in the Dining Hall in the Autumn Term. For anyone who is not aware of the 14 food allergens, they are: celery, crustaceans, eggs, fish, lupin, milk, molluscs, mustard, gluten, peanuts, sesame, soybeans, sulphites and tree nuts.
Well done to the members of the design team who collaborated on this project either in person on school site or remotely via Teams meetings.
The members of the design team are Gabriella, Georgina, Sophia, Pearl, Georgia, Alice, Libby, Rachel, Daisy and Nicole.
