Guerrilla Health Watch came out of a project in the Heidi Cody‘s Culture Jamming class at the Integrated Media Arts program at Hunter College. The project is called Guerrilla Nutrition Labels and invites consumers like you to put humorous warning labels on products with harmful ingredients. The labels were designed to fit on the sides of cereal boxes, but have found use on all sorts of products. Labelers have surreptitiously slipped them on or near to products in stores, as I originally imagined them, and found creative uses for them in private settings like homes and offices. The website includes DIY instruction and downloadable labels, as well as a video of me in action, set to some great music by my brother.
This page is for YOU to record your experiences using the labels (or receiving them…).
Guerrilla Health Watch 
So, I’m pretty bad at lying because it shows all over my face. I think the twenty-something employee at the meat counter at the Safeway in the suburb of Walnut Creek, CA, knew I was up-to-n0-good as I was pacing up and down the cereal aisle in front of him, while nervously looking back and forth. I don’t think he really cared what I was doing, it was just a source of excitement on an otherwise slow afternoon. My source of excitement was having luminescent (yes, she emits light) Sarah, the creator of Guerrilla Health Watch, along with me. What luck…like admiring the Sistine Chapel in the presence of Michelangelo. Sarah gave me words of encouragement and then gave me space to make the experience my own. I found some offending snack cracker boxes, grabbed the stickers out of my purse and started sticking away.
My favorite part was how well the design meshed with the package. If I were to buy a be-stickered box at the store, I probably wouldn’t see the sticker until the box was sitting on my kitchen counter, my mouth full of partially-hydrogenated ick. Now, for full disclosure, I am not super-attentive to what I eat, so it would indeed be a good thing if I bought of these boxes. With my up-to-no-good eating habits, it felt good to do a up-to-good-good thing.
Guerrilla Nutrition Labels do mesh nicely with cereal boxes. I’ve also found that they look fetching when posted onto cardboard displays in the supermarket. I had some GNL’s floating around in my school bag from a previous sticker-bombing campaign, and while food shopping in Greenpoint, found myself pasting them all over a Cheerios display. I find that applying ample pressure to the sticker with my thumb ensures that the glue will quickly fuse with the cardboard – this way, the sticker will not come off without leaving destruction in it’s wake, even moments after being applied. I wasn’t too worried about store clerks seeing me do this – they were already pissed at me for tearing a bunch of grapes out of one of those awful Styrofoam/plastic wrap packages (you know, the kind that enables the store to sell you rotten food, all while creating more garbage.) GNL stickers rock, and for all the useful places they can be affixed, the most helpful place for me is at eye-level on the fridge door.
L