The Permament Mission of Italy to the International Organizations in Geneva organized today, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, a seminar titled “Positive Nutrition: Traditional Diets as a Model for a Healthy Life”.
Experts and nutritionists from different continents took part to the event:
– Dennis Bieris, Professor of Pediatrics and Director at the Children’s Nutrition Research Center of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston;
– Deanna Pucciarelli, Associate Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at the Ball State University in Muncie;
– Marco Silano, Senior Scientist and Head of the Unit of Human Nutrition and Health of the Italian National Institute of Health in Rome;
– Hsin-Jen Chen, Associate Professor at the Institute of Public Health of the School of Medicine of the National Yang-Ming University in Taipei;
– Hugo Da Costa Ribeiro, Associate Professor at Department of Pediatrics of “Universidade Federal da Bahia” in Salvador, Brazil.
Italy and many other co-sponsors hosted – at the margins of the 72nd World Health Assembly just two weeks ago – a side-event titled “Nutrition4Health”: the event was opened, among others, by the Undersecretary of State for Health of Italy, Prof. Armando Bartolazzi, and by the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. A panel of this event – moderated by the Secretary General of the Italian Ministry of Health, Dr. Giuseppe Ruocco – was specifically dedicated to the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition and – in this framework – to the launch of an Action Network on traditional, healthy and sustainable diets.
Action Networks have been identified by FAO and WHO as an effective tool through which member States (and other relevant stakeholders) can work collaboratively to help achieving the objectives set by the Program of the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition. One of the areas for possible collaboration is “Sustainable, resilient food systems for healthy diets”. Action networks are therefore a mean to form alliances of countries to align and accelerate efforts on a specific topic, also through involving civil society, academia, research centers and the private sector.
The Action Network on traditional, healthy and sustainable diets (Mediterranean and others) is also a follow up to the Political Declaration of the UN High Level Meeting on the Prevention and Control of NCDs of last September 2018 – which promotes education to healthy, varied and balanced diets – and to the Foreign Policy and Global Health Resolution of December 2018, which specifically invites “member States to promote and preserve traditional healthy diets, food diversity and healthy eating habits and lifestyles, considering the importance of food as part of the cultural heritage and a vehicle to promote nutrition literacy”.
To Italy, this also constitutes an opportunity to share our experience and to present our model of public health and prevention of obesity, based on education to food and nutrition and on the principles of the Mediterranean Diet: Italy managed to attain the highest standards of public healthcare, the top positions in life expectancy charts and, last but not least, the lowest obesity rates amongst OECD member States.
The video of the event is available at the address:
http://webtv.un.org/watch/positive-nutrition-traditional-diets-for-a-healthy-life/6045323879001
