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Press coverage of Kunkelfruit Wiki:

Advertising Age has included Kunkelfruit Wiki in its current list of "10 Great Time-Wasting Websites" (subscription required).

Apparently, The Frager Factor blog has reproduced the list.

Another positive mention, this time on Gastroporn, Confessions of a Food Whore

Gawker.com: "Kunkelfruit Now More Than Just Derogatory Nickname for 'Indecision' Author"

Goodmagazine.com: "You Don't Know Where That's Been"

Consumatron.com: "From the Mommy, Where Do Baby Ruths Come From? department:"


What is Kunkelfruit?

When you eat from this fruit then whenever you put your hand on a product, a commodity, an article, then, at the moment of your touch, how this commodity came into your hands becomes plainly evident to you. Now there is no more mystification of labor, no more of a world in which the object arrives by magic -- scrubbed, clean, no past, all of its history washed away.

-- Benjamin Kunkel, Indecision: A Novel


Wouldn't it be great if this magic fruit were real? Now it is.

Kunkelfruit Wiki is the web home for articles about consumer products. Each article shows that a product is something made by human hands from the fruits of the earth. It helps to make the process of manufacture and journey to market transparent to the consumer.

This wiki is meant to:

  • help make commerce more open and personal
  • encourage a more informed consumer
  • facilitate learning-by-doing investigative journalism


Kunkefruit Wiki is a collaborative project that emphasizes objective reporting -- much in the same way that Wikipedia calls for accuracy in its content. But where Wikipedia asks, "What is it?" Kunkelfruit Wiki asks, "How is it made?" And as an opensource wiki, anyone can write an article or improve an existing one:

  • High school and college students can do team homework projects to create articles.
  • Travelers or residents in the country of manufacture can contribute photos and/or videos of the factories and their workers, or of the land--for example, farms or mines--from which raw materials are harvested or extracted.
  • Workers can volunteer their own information about the products they make and the companies they work for.
  • Consumers can research the actual history of the products that they purchase, as well as the impact of their purchases on the community, and on the environment.


Kunkelfruit articles include:

  • a narrative that follows the entire life history of the product from raw material extraction, to manufacture, to distribution, to retail placement, sale, and ultimately, disposal
  • a breakdown of costs of the product as percentages of sales price, for example, how much of each purchase goes to a celebrity endorser, to executive compensation, to manufacturing labor, to marketing and advertising, to transportation costs, to raw materials, etc.
  • pictures and/or videos of the facility where it is manufactured, the workers who make it and their general living conditions (i.e. photos of the houses/neighborhood they live in), along with information about their wages, the cost of living in the country where they live, etc.

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