Analogies between food and design go beyond the process of transforming the matter: baking, moulding, extruding could be identically actions of cooking as well as manufacturing a product. Making ravioli isn't like packaging food with an edible film of dough?

From this point of view it becomes very interesting the notion of "nutrient" of the cradle2cradle approach to production, which substitutes the one of "material". Biological and technical nutrients differ ones form the others according to their origins and to the possibility to use them as nutrients in future process or to dispose them in an upcycling process.

Let's push even more our imagination and think of "self-regenerating" or "evolutive" nutrients, like those we are - more or less - familiar in our kitchen: yoghurt, "mother dough" (the yeast the bakers use for their bread) or "nukadoko"(the fermented rice bran bed traditionally used for pickling vegetables in Japan) just to give three "multicultural" examples... 

They are at the base of many traditional dishes yet we did not get the idea of how wonderful living nutrients they are. Once you start producing your own yoghurt or homemade yeast, you start a process that will never end unless you deliberately stop it. They will regenerate themselves on and on over time - requiring just some "refreshment"  (i.e.: adding milk, or beer, or flour,...) and stable environmental conditions. Legends says nukadoko can be handed down from mother to daughter...

Now, can you imagine a design made out of living materials which regenerate themselves with just a little "refresh"? Living materials for living and sustainable objects?

A starting point could be the "EcoCradle", a natural compound mainly used for packaging. As far as I know it is the only material which is not manufactured, but it naturally grows in its final configuration.

It is based on the use of a filamentous fungi (mushroom roots) which interacts with some agricultural byproducts like cotton seed hulls and buck wheat, transforming the whole mixture into a protective package. After use it could be easily disposed because completely biodegradable.  

A process which is clearly inspired by the efficiency of nature and its ability to create abundancy.