Its aim is to enhance the acknowledgment of the Mediterranean diet, expression of the diversity of Mediterranean food cultures and food systems, as a sustainable lever linking, within the 2030 Agenda, food consumption and production in the Mediterranean, towards more sustainable food systems in the region, a "driver" for addressing the food demand towards more sustainable food consumption patterns, thereby influencing in this way also the food production.
The Second World Conference on the Revitalization of the Mediterranean Diet is a follow up to the First World Conference on the Mediterranean diet "From a Healthy Dietary Pattern to a Healthy Mediterranean Sustainable Lifestyle", organized in 2016, in Milan, by IFMeD (International Foundation of Mediterranean Diet), with CIHEAM Bari and FENS (Federation of European Nutrition Societies), with the technical collaboration of FAO, and the collaboration of the Forum on Mediterranean food Cultures, Ciiscam/SapienzaUniversity of Rome, ICAF (International Commission on Food Anthropology), and Sprim-Italia as event manager. On this occasion, the Call for Action on the Revitalization of the Mediterranean Diet was launched, signed by 37 scientific societies, research institutes and national and international organisations, following two previous Calls:
"2015 Med Diet EXPO Call: Time to Act ", joined by 81 institutions, on the occasion of the International Conference at the EXPO in Milan on "Does the Mediterranean Diet Still Exist? Nutrition-Health-Quality-Sustainability-Innovation-Evolution", organized by CNR, CREA, Ciheam Bari, ENEA and Forum on Mediterranean food cultures, in collaboration with IFMeD, produced by Sprim-Italy as Media Partner & Technical Advisor;
"2005 Call for a Common Action on Food in the Mediterranean", on the occasion of the third Euro-Med Forum "Dialogues between Cultures and Civilizations of the Mediterranean on Food Security", organized in Rome, under the high patronage of the President of the Republic, by the Institute of Food Science and Nutrition of the Sapienza University of Rome and the Forum on Mediterranean Food Cultures, with the collaboration of CIHEAM Bari, ICAF, and the Foundation Universitas Italica, with the economic support of the Regions of Sicily and Calabria.
Since 2002, through a continous interdisciplinary dialogue among participants, the Mediterranean Diet has been foreseen as a sustainable development resource for the Mediterranean region. Since 2009, it has been identified as a sustainable diet model, and, in 2010, acknowledged as an intangible cultural heritage of humankind by UNESCO.
The Mediterranean is historically the meeting region of ancient millenarian histories from which the modern Western culture was born and is the region, at this particular historical moment, in which growing ecological, economic and social challenges coexist with unresolved international tensions. The Mediterranean is currently seen mostly as a dividing sea, but culturally diverse countries are still found united within the Mediterranean diet heritage without for this to distort the identity of each of them. The Mediterranean diet is the testimony of the strong conjunction between people, who are living in the same sea, their territories and their ways of life, as stated in the Charter of the Bio-Mediterranean, signed by the participant countries of the Bio-Mediterranean Cluster of the EXPO Milan 2015.
In the context of achieving the objectives of Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, the interest on sustainable food diets has grown in recent years, in the overall framework of improving the sustainability of current Food systems, by linking consumption and production. In this international debate, the interest in the Mediterranean diet has also been re-activated as sustainable diet model, linking food consumption and production in the Mediterranean region.