minuspoon & minusugar by jeongdae kim from germany

minuspoon & minusugar is a tea spoon and a cube-sugar, which you can use for coffee or tea. We can easily see, there are many people, who add habitually several times spoons of sugar/cube-sugar in the cup of coffee or tea.

With minuspoon the user can see a same sugar mountain as that with the normal spoon, but with implicit different amount of sugar. Therefore, the user can be visually satisfied, but s/he actually ingests less sugar. minusugar looks just like a usual cube-sugar. Therefore, the consumer can be satisfied as before, but he actually ingests less sugar, because minusugar is hollow.

Inspiration

People, who add more sugar than needed for coffee or tee from a momentary demand or habit, can be easily addicted to sweet taste also easily exposed to many disease caused from excessive ingest of sugar.

If the behavior (adding more sugar than needed habitually) of the people couldn‘t be stopped directly, I wanted to find a way how they could take less sugar without a forceful restriction. (within the range of the unchanged satisfy related with a certain behavior as well as visual effect)

Most of all its simplicity is the key of design, while other usual aspects of tea spoon stay as before, for example, the look when putting sugar on it (minuspoon) or it self (minusugar) and the material as well as how to grip and use. For social issues, diabetes is one of the most common diseases that occur today, that is in close relation with sugar. As the growing of interest in wellness and the number of people concerning about their health, the need for the reducing sugar intake has increased. When using the minuspoon & minusugar, you can take the less amount of sugar for tea or coffee than before as well as help to keep away from the vicious cycle of excessive sugar intake and many diseases from that. Especially it will be welcomed by those who are concerned about diabetes through the change of the habit of sweet taste. Also this idea could be widely available in different kinds of food.

Tea and coffee can be found almost anywhere in the world. Although there are some differences depending on the regional condition or culture, it is often to see, that people take something sweet in their coffee or tee. Additionally sugar is one of basic ingredients, that can be found in the most kitchen in the world therefore the addiction and disease related with sugar are also important issues beyond the border between countries or cultures. The shape is also easy to understand and could be easily used in many cultural areas.

Excessive ingest of sugar is one of important issues, that are concerned in many countries. In according with the longer desired life time many people have interest about that. And advantages from proper ingest of sugar (minimize harmful effect) are comparable to the advantages from good nutritional ingest.

Development

I researched the disease caused by excessive ingest of sugar as well as the ways how to overcome the temptation of sweet taste and how to minimize the prevalence of diseases. In the research I knew that by reducing sugar in processed foods by between 20 and 30 per cent over the next three to five years we could remove 100 calories a day from diets and it is enough to halt or reverse the obesity epidemic. Based on various sketches I got the idea of minuspoon & minusugar, and then made prototypes with 3d printer quickly and tested the usability. Currently I am making minuspoon prototype of bronze, aluminum and bio plastic.