HYBRID EVENT: You can participate in person at Rome, Italy or Virtually from your home or work.

8th Edition of International Conference on

Traditional Medicine, Ethnomedicine and Natural Therapies

June 05-07, 2025 | Rome, Italy

Traditional Medicine 2023

Making food literacy a global priority

Speaker at Traditional Medicine, Ethnomedicine and Natural Therapies 2023 - Antonia Demas
Food Studies Institute, United States
Title : Making food literacy a global priority

Abstract:

This presentation is based on years of evidence-based research with diverse populations that demonstrates how to have a sustainable positive impact on behaviours concerning food, nutrition, and the environment through food literacy education. The award-winning curriculum, Food is Elementary (FIE), is based on experiential, multidisciplinary sensory-based strategies for people of all ages and backgrounds that is fun and engages the senses. A goal of this work is to provide the public, beginning at an early age and continuing through adulthood, with accurate information so they make sensible decisions about our global health and the health of the planet. FIE is conceptually based and each unit is catered to the developmental abilities and interest of the audience. There is a need to engage the public with truthful information about how nutrition affects our lives and how what we eat affects climate change. To quote anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, “Food is Good to Think”. We need to address this from a serious scientific perspective and provide young people with the intellectual tools they will need to develop strategies to preserve their wellness and that of planet earth for our collective future. The solution is holistic integrated education, or we will continue to be fed false information from the commercial industries involved in our most pressing global issues of public health and climate. The non-profit Food Studies Institute will license the FIE curriculum, train, and work with all interested parties depending on their interests. We offer a variety of options ranging from strategies to begin the program in schools, hospitals, and community centres based on their needs, to designing appropriate evaluation measures and documenting the results.

Biography:

Antonia Demas is the founder and president of the nonprofit Food Studies Institute. She has been engaged in food literacy education since the early 1970’s and is the author of the award-winning curriculum Food is Elementary which teaches people of all backgrounds and ages about food, nutrition, cooking, gardening and ecology through hands-on experiential, sensory education. She has a master’s and Ph.D. from Cornell University and conducts research to demonstrate that early and ongoing education is essential to promote food literacy as a solution to global health and environmental issues including diet -related diseases and climate change. Dr. Demas has been a Visiting Scholar at Tufts University, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, the Medical School at the University of Illinois, Rockford, and the University of Kentucky School of Public Health, Louisville.

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