I looked at The Rhythm of Food by Google News Lab and Truth & Beauty. This project displays the trend in meal and food searches on google throughout the year, showcasing the seasonal patterns of specific foods or recipes. They collected data of food-related searches from Google Trends, using Google Knowledge Graph, which separates the fruit Apple from other objects, such as the Apple computer.
They gathered weekly search terms for 15 years and plotted the results in a year clock, which shows a circular plot with the radius proportional to the number of searches and the colors representing the year of the search data. These year clocks have interactive features, which allows the users to gain further data on the trend for each dish.
For instance, hot chocolate shows an expected trend of increasing searches (peaks) in the winter months starting from early November to January compared to summer. By clicking the green “Play!” button, the user is able to observe the changing trend in the number of searches by year from 2004 to 2018. In addition, each block represents a week in the year the color represents and by hovering over each block, the user can gain information about what week and year the data corresponds to as well as the Google trend score.
Another interesting observation that comes out of this data visualization is the differences in trends among different countries. Observing different trends by season and by country would be helpful for those in the culinary field to come up with recipes or marketing strategies for their dishes. From the trend in the hot chocolate example, wise restaurant or cafe owners might decide to prepare more hot chocolate stocks during winter while using that resource for other dishes in the summer. Keeping a record of this trend for a longer time period may become an integral part of historical records as the food and dishes we eat reflects our diet, lifestyle, and social or environmental changes.
