The biennial Perugia Food & Sustainability Studies Conference is entitled “Exploring Ethics through Food Choices. It will be held June 7th-10th, 2018, at The Umbra Institute in Perugia, Italy. Keynote Speakers include: Lisa Heldke (Gustavus Adolphus College), Michael Herzfeld (Harvard University), and John Lang (Occidental College).

"Nestlé’s direct-sales army in Brazil is part of a broader transformation of the food system that is delivering Western-style processed food and sugary drinks to the most isolated pockets of Latin America, Africa and Asia. As their growth slows in the wealthiest countries, multinational food companies like Nestlé, PepsiCo and General Mills have been aggressively expanding their presence in developing nations, unleashing a marketing juggernaut that is upending traditional diets from Brazil to Ghana to India."

Rising CO2 levels are changing our planet faster than we can fathom and creating new challenges for supporting human life. Case in point: as crops grow bigger and faster, they become less and less nutritious as sugar levels increase and vitamins/minerals decrease. Are we headed towards fields of 'junk' food?

Western medicine often neglects just how much our diets shape our overall health, but California just approved funding for a program that lowers medical expenses for patients with chronic diseases by providing them with medically tailored meals. In this model, the control still remains in the hands of the physician instead of relying on patients to feed themselves well.