The Rotman + Jump Learning Lab has come to a close. But that doesn’t mean the learning has to end! In fact, we’re always on the lookout for exciting organizations to partner with. And whether you’re looking to improve airline travel, establish better work-life balance for doctors, or define the future of community, Jump is ready to facilitate the experience. To learn more about Learning Labs and Boot Camps at Jump, visit our website. Or, to hear an outsiders take on what’s it like to spend a day learning at Jump, read this New York Times Magazine profile.

If you’re a chocoholic, and someone tells you they don’t like sweets, you may be surprised (shocked even), but that’s about it. Their revelation is unlikely to substantially affect the relationship you share. It’s just chocolate, right? How important could it be?

Yet, we see that opinions about food and health are becoming more polarizing and more divisive than ever before. It seems that people are no longer simply expressing the preferences of their taste buds through food. Instead, many people now view their choices in food and eating as expressions of their larger values. When considering variables like sustainability, organically grown and locally produced, people don’t seem to be as willing to recognize the existence of a middle ground. Either you’re a supporter (dare we say believer?), or you’re not.

As food grows in importance as an expression of personal values, there are two key impacts on relationships between people in communities (both large and small). On the positive side, people are seeking out like-minded folks and building new communities centered on these food value systems. Both physical and virtual communities are sprouting up so that people can share their knowledge, access resources (like food and food producers that match a particular value system), and socialize with each other.

At the same time however, differences in opinion and values around food are creating new tensions within existing communities and relationships. There is no longer consensus within these communities as to what constitutes the “right” foods to grow or the “right” way to eat. Instead, individuals are constructing their own definitions about what’s right and wrong. Many feel passionate enough about their positions to evangelize: to their family, to their friends, to their neighbors, and to the community at large. And, just like religion and politics, these differences in beliefs cause arguments and pull people apart.

Companies seeking to deliver new products and services around the future of food will need to acknowledge this emerging dialogue. Does the new product have the potential to build bridges, or might it be used to burn them down?

For many of us, it’s easy to eat the way we want at home. We have control over the food we purchase and how it’s prepared. This makes home predictable, and that fact allows people to create and live to their own versions of healthy. However, when we leave the home – our personal food sanctuaries – the outside world quickly gets very unpredictable. We often lose control over our food choices.

Whether you’re a busy professional in the city or a busy soccer mom in the suburbs, leaving our homes means that it’s time to start making sacrifices when it comes to food. We trade quality and care for price and convenience. And it’s frustrating for folks trying to make a meaningful commitment to healthy eating. You may live in an affluent, well-connected community with access to amazing food sources, but the realities of life mean that you might as well be living in a food desert.

So, while healthy eating choices and organic products are increasingly main stream – showing up in places like Costco, Wal-Mart and Safeway – we have to ask ourselves if people really have access to the better food products they increasingly crave in all the right places. People want to control their diets in all phases of their daily lives, both inside and outside of the home.

There seems to be both a challenge and an opportunity here: As our foodie population matures, can businesses find ways to create offerings that meet people wherever they are, at all times of the day, while still giving folks to the freedom to make healthy choices.

Throughout our field work, we noticed that legal and regulatory issues are creating problems for small, local growers and buyers. Modern regulations haven’t yet caught up to the long tail of independent food producers that are starting emerge in all corners of the U.S. market. In San Francisco for example, many community gardens are not located on property zoned as commercial land. This means that growers can’t sell their products legally, even if they wanted to.

As a workaround, some producers have opted to create barter systems– we witnessed people trading everything from flowers to honey! But perhaps even more importantly, we learned that bartering does more than just exchange goods and enable specialization. It creates communities with strong and lasting interpersonal bonds. Does this growing phenomenon speak to a larger business opportunity? And as a side benefit, could widespread bartering actually create stronger communities on a larger scale?

After a long, hard week of exciting work, we’ve reached the end of the live Rotman + Jump Learning Lab. However, the experience isn’t over. We’ve got plenty of great insights to munch on in the weeks ahead, and we’ll continue to work together to share new business ideas in the healthy eating space. For now, we’ll leave you with a group shot of the entire team plus a few photos from today’s presentations. As we said, stay tuned for further updates here and on Twitter at @jumplearninglab. Have a great weekend!

Here are a couple of recent news headlines that caught our attention over the past two days. We hope you enjoy!

Reuters – U.S. schools add fresh food without busting budgets – Click Here

Good – Woodhull Hospital Lets Artists Pay with Their Craft – Click Here

The Chicago Tribune – Wal-Mart working to get fresh food flowing into city store – Click Here

The Stir – Baby Food Diet Hype, Just Eat Fruits and Veg, Nutritionist Says – Click Here

Fast Company – Life in 2020: Your Dating History on Display – Click Here

Toronto Life – Filion on the Toronto a la Cart fiasco – Click Here

Good – Health Care Bites: Will Gen X Demand a Better System? – Click Here

Rajat Chadda, one of our friends from the Rotman School of Management, is the man behind many of the great photos you’ve seen on this blog so far. And in addition to chronicling our many field trips, ideation sessions, lectures and in-home visits, he’s created a collection of photos of his MBA classmates. It’s now time to meet the entire Rotman team:

And here’s a few shots of the Jumpsters who helped put this workshop together:

Yesterday, we mentioned that retailers and manufacturers are finding value in the stories behind the production of food. Customers however, are often looking for more then just the location of origin. Sure, it might be enough to know that your new bottle of wine comes from Yountville or Burgundy, but with many food items, more and more consumers want to dig deeper than the “made in” label. People care about the company behind the product, the process by which it was made, the transportation routes used to deliver it, and the treatment of the animals, people and environment that went into making the food product a reality.

The emphasis on storytelling begs several questions. Who’s role is it to create the story of healthy food products, and who’s role is it to tell that story? What venues other than at the point-of-sale are important to leverage in order to get the story out? How interactive do curious consumers want the experience of a healty-food narrative to be? Where are the best sources of inspiration for great storytelling? What kinds of stories are folks really craving?

Some people believe that fresh foods are an essential ingredient in a healthy lifestyle. We met folks this week who were building home gardens as a way to supplement their purchases of organic or unprocessed food at retail stores. And for amateurs exploring how to bring gardening into their homes, learning to grow their own fruits and veggies is a trial and error process. So to support their interest, these folks need information, advice, and sometimes a helping hand.

The local gardening seed and supply shop certainly has the products to support these people. But how well do they support folks who are primarily focused on health? Are new types of customers coming into these community stores? Do seed shops need to reorganize themselves to support health as much as horticulture? What would happen if the local seed shop could build some empathy for a new type of amateur customer – one who cares most about the impact of healthy eating, and less about the activity of gardening?

Most would agree that it’s nothing new to find people who have different views of health, but we’ve been surprised by the truly diverse and growing list of its definitions. Health is no longer as simple as an optimized body. Some people define health as broadly as the tastiness of their food. Others put huge stock in how close to home their food was produced. And other groups of folks care about organic food, natural food, community or even happiness when it comes to defining health.

Being a healthy person is something most folks aspire to become, and so people create their own – and perhaps unique – visions of health to help themselves get there. So the question becomes, how can we create products that actually support health (in a medically accurate and responsible way), while still tuning into the varying aspirations of consumers?