Scientists from 75 countries got together in Boston last month to discuss major issues surrounding the future of food and managed to reach common ground on a large number of recommendations. Now it’s up to official nutrition and food organizations to implement them…
The Mediterranean Diet in all it’s fresh Produce glory: Further affirmation
from the Finding Common Ground Conference.
The Finding Common Ground conference was organized by Oldways, a food and nutrition nonprofit organization, and organizers were pleasantly surprised by the outcome.
“I find it rather remarkable that we achieved as much consensus as we did,” Dr. Walter Willett, Nutrition Chair at the Harvard School of Public Health, said in the news release. “The foods that define a healthy diet include abundant fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, legumes and minimal amounts of refined starch, sugar and red meat, especially keeping processed red meat intake low. When you put it all together, that’s a lot of common ground.”
Hmm… More Fruits and Veggies? Less Starch, Sugar and Red Meat? Sounds like the Mediterranean Diet again…
Dietary recommendations just the start…
The 11 points of common ground in the Conference’s final report dwell heavily on political, social and environmental issues. Sustainable food production is deemed essential: “[The problem of] food insecurity cannot be solved without sustainable food systems. Inattention to sustainability is willful disregard for the quality and quantity of food available to the next generation, i.e., our own children.”
That should go without saying.
Conference participants also agreed that, to be successful, any new policies and efforts going forward must be free from and separate from political influence. And they must be based on solid scientific evidence, not junk science or social media g0ssip. And valid scientific advances and discoveries should be announced without the sensationalism that often accompanies new diet findings: “Representations of new diet studies to the public should be made in the context of the prevailing consensus. New evidence should be added to what was known before, not substituted for it sequentially. Accurate reporting is the responsibility of both scientists and the media.”
Amen.
Further to that point, the conference report warns about the persistence of confusion among the masses over what constitutes a healthy eating regime: “We express strong concern for the high level of apparent confusion prevailing, and propagated among the public about what constitutes a healthy eating pattern. Despite uncertainty about some details, much of this confusion is unnecessary, and at odds with the understanding of experts and the weight of evidence.”
Amen, again.
Finally, the report says our food should be:
• Good for human health,
• Good for the planet (sustainability; ecosystem conservation; biodiversity), and
• Simply…good – unapologetically delicious.
I think we can all agree on that.
Now, let’s see how many of the Conference report recommendations are reflected in the next update to official (government endorsed) Dietary Guidelines documents in the coming months…
~ Maggie J.