Food between health and society

Abstract

Food culture has undertaken a process of renewal due to severe food safety problems occurred in the late 20th century: the so called mad cow disease (BSE, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) or the swine flu and bird flu. So long, safety needs were the beginning of a new consciousness about food and diet influence on human health. The demand for quality food is moving toward qualitative food features. This is a great challenge and a new opportunity for agriculture: to supply valuable goods and new services, to a wide range of consumers, searching for local, ecological, ethical, healthy requisites, from food and country. A new sensibility is also growing about urban life quality; overcrowded cities hardly supply the needed services and suffer for the loosening of the contact with the environment and the countryside. Food is nowadays the way territory is supplied inside the town: a food that is evocative of nature and history, healthy and correlated with the share of social values.