Milan to Host First World Conference on Mediterranean Diet

Scientists and experts will be gath­er­ing in Milan, Italy on July 7 – 8, 2016 for the first World Conference on the Mediterranean Diet.

Organized by the International Federation of Mediterranean Diet (IFMeD), the stated aim of the two-day inter­na­tional con­fer­ence is to ​“revi­tal­ize the Med Diet, from a healthy dietary pat­tern to a healthy Mediterranean sus­tain­able lifestyle.”

Thirty inter­na­tional sci­en­tists have been invited to par­tic­i­pate, said an IFMeD press release announc­ing the event, which also revealed that the high­light of the con­fer­ence will be the unveil­ing of a new food pyra­mid of the Mediterranean Diet, referred to as the ​“New Pyramid of Sustainable Mediterranean Diet.”

Sandro Dernini, gen­eral sec­re­tary of IFMeD, and an expert at the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) explained why a new Mediterranean Diet food pyra­mid is nec­es­sary: ​“The con­cept of the Mediterranean Diet has evolved over the last 50 years: from a healthy dietary pat­tern, it has become a model of sus­tain­able diet. The inno­v­a­tive approach of this new pyra­mid is to con­nect the health dimen­sion to the socio­cul­tural, eco­nomic and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity dimen­sions.”

The con­fer­ence will launch an inter­na­tional cam­paign to pro­mote the Mediterranean diet at a round­table ses­sion called ​“MED DIET 4.0 — a mul­ti­coun­try and mul­ti­stake­holder frame­work to improve the sus­tain­abil­ity of the Mediterranean diet,” orga­nized by IFMeD, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Rome-based research orga­ni­za­tion CIISCAM (Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca sulle Culture Alimentari Mediterranee); CIHEAM-BARI (Centre International de Hautes Etudes Agronomiques Méditerranéennes), an inter­gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion of 13 Mediterranean coun­tries and head­quar­tered in Paris; and the Forum of Mediterranean Food Cultures based in Rome.

Created in 2014 and with a reg­is­tered office in London, IFMeD is an inter­na­tional foun­da­tion of insti­tu­tions, uni­ver­si­ties, and research cen­ters from dif­fer­ent coun­tries ded­i­cated to the pro­mo­tion of the Mediterranean diet.

The pro­gram of the con­fer­ence is avail­able on the IFMeD web­site.

• IFMeD


• IFMeD