If you want some interesting posters to liven up your lab/classroom you might want to look at those produced for sale by James Kennedy, a teacher at Haileybury School in Melbourne, Australia. In an attempt to change the public perception of ‘chemicals’ James has designed posters of natural foods such a bananas, eggs and blueberries and listed all the chemicals they contain.  He states,  “'I wanted to erode the fear that many people have of ‘chemicals’, and demonstrate that nature evolves compounds, mechanisms and structures far more complicated and unpredictable than anything we can produce in the lab.
These posters aim to show that chemistry isn't artificial and dangerous; but that chemistry is natural and everywhere”.

A few weeks ago several newspapers picked up on this. James’ website provides links to many of them. What is interesting are the comments that people have made. As might be expected they range from those that applaud what he is trying to achieve, to those that claim he does not know what he is talking about. You could use some of these to stimulate both awareness and debate.

Some examples of comments:

“Great, now you're going to make all the junk food haters think they can't even eat fresh fruit or eggs!”

“I wanted to erode the fear that many people have of ‘chemicals’, and demonstrate that nature evolves compounds, mechanisms and structures far more complicated and unpredictable than anything we can produce in the lab." Therein lies the problem, you're (chemists) messing with things you have a severe lack of knowledge about, you didn't erode my fear with that sentence! It's worse with genetically modified foods but most of the stuff you create for adding to food are things I stay well clear of.”

“Natural E numbers - well I never!!”

“There is a different between lab made E numbers and ones existent in the food itself.”

“Well for me as long as all those chemicals are naturally occurring in a natural fruit/veg they are probably in it in the correct proportions and don’t worry me a bit, just don’t eat too much of any one of them!

“Well done sir. Do beer next please.”