“To feed is to prevent”. Thus the Minister of Health, Orazio Schillaci, closed the first National Conference on Nutrition promoted by the Ministry of Health, which saw speeches by the Minister of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry, Francesco Lollobrigida, by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Edmondo Cirielli, and of the Undersecretary of Health Marcello Gemmato.
The National Conference, from 21 to 23 February, saw the participation of all the players in nutrition: institutions, scientific societies, academics, associations, the agri-food chain (production, transformation, distribution up to the citizen consumer).
During the three days, all the topics related to nutrition were addressed, from investments in nutrition to the improvement of services to citizens, through malnutrition, the role of catering in promoting health, the reduction of food waste and environmental sustainability up to the prevention through the various communication channels.
“They were three days of intense work – Minister Schillaci declared – from which proposals emerged that led to a synthesis to be put in place to make our nation resilient, citizens more aware and informed, clinical nutrition services and more ready to give adequate answers by overcoming inhomogeneities and inequalities”.
Minister Schillaci recalled how “a healthy diet based on the Italian Mediterranean diet, with products from our land and a decisive no to synthetic foods, helps improve health, prevent chronic degenerative diseases that have a significant impact on health and on mortality but also on the well-being of Italian citizens”.
“Made in Italy in nutrition is fundamental – said Minister Lollobrigida – We must explain the benefits of a diet that makes the Italian people among the most long-lived in the world. The demonization of traditional models leads to an attempt to pass food overprocessed as an element of environmental protection, while instead they do incalculable damage”.
“We are working to include prevention with a focus dedicated to healthy eating in primary and secondary schools – concluded Minister Schillaci – school catering must be transformed into a tool for the promotion of models based on the Italian Mediterranean diet and on supplies from local supply chains , reversing the increasingly widespread consumption, especially among the youngest, of ultra-processed foods”.
In this regard, the return to the figure of the school doctor according to Undersecretary Gemmato “would be an added value for our national health system and could become the winning perspective in terms of prevention. In the same way, I believe that, even from elementary schools, we could envisage biologists and doctors who deal with nutrition, to illustrate correct lifestyles and food to students. These are the concepts that we should put in place for a new prevention from below”.