Press Area

As world leaders gather in New York for the 74th U.N. General Assembly, the Barilla Foundation and key partners call on the food industry to take immediate and sustained action to address the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

Parma, April 03 2019 – Food is a fundamental part of our well-being, but are we really sure that our diet guarantees a long and healthy life? The answer is no, according to data analyzed by the Barilla Foundation for World Health Day (April 7).

Parma, ITALY, July 25, 2019: The United States ranked last in preserving the world’s resources, according to a Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition and the Economist Intelligence Unit Food Sustainability study analyzed for Global Overshoot Day.

The United States has the largest “water footprint” in the world, followed by Italy. Japan is the most economical among developed nations, according to the latest available figures compiled by the Barilla Foundation.  

• 9 out of 10 people live in areas where air quality levels are below World Health Organization standards

• The main causes of air pollution include transport, agriculture, energy consumption in buildings, industry and electricity production 

• In order to reduce pollution, producers should take action to promote sustainable agriculture and consumers should chose diets with a low environmental impact

• On World Environment Day (5 June), the Barilla Foundation launches its proposal

A vegetarian menu cuts an individual’s “water footprint” by about half

• A new study “Food & Cities” presented at the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition’s 9th Annual Forum shows that cities can make sizeable contributions to reaching the UN’s 2030 the Sustainable Development Goals

• The study presents seven case studies (New York, Rio de Janeiro, Milan, Ouagadougou, Tel Aviv, Seoul and Sydney) showing what cities are doing to solve food waste and hunger 

• 821 million people around the world suffer from hunger (+4.6% from 2017) creating a “city alert” given that 80% of population will live in cities by 2050 

BCFN – Ministry of Education, University and Research: a three-year program designed to promote global citizenship and innovation through close dialog with teachers

• For World Food Day, the Barilla Foundation reveals  some of the findings of the Food Sustainability Index: praise for the Italian commitment to curb the spread of obesity, especially among the youngest members of the population (36.8% of under-19s are overweight)

• In 2017 Italians lived  4,011 years less also due to incorrect nutritional choices

• The Barilla Foundation, in partnership with the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), presents its roadmap for rethinking our dietary systems in a sustainable key and for achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. 

• This and other themes related to food will be among the topics discussed during the 9th International Forum on Food and Nutrition organized by BCFN (Milan, November 27-28). 

• The Fondazione Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition suggests a sustainable summer holiday menu

• 5 recipes developed by Chef Roberto Bassi for a picnic lunch that helps you to save money and reduce food waste 

• The 5+1 useful tips from BCFN for reusing leftovers and taking less plastic to the beach

BRUSSELS – 6 June 2018 – “The European Union needs a revolution in thinking to support sustainable agriculture and nutrition and migration”, Paolo Barilla, Vice Chairman of the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) Foundation told a high-level International Forum in Brussels on Wednesday.  

 • Food Sustainability Index: France, Italy and Spain are countries with the longest life expectancy (on average, 83 years)

• Thanks to the Mediterranean diet, people can live on average up to 4.5 years longer

• The 'nutritional transition' we are experiencing risks to increase the number of overweight and obese people: today 1 out of 3 Italian children between 5-19 years are overweight

• With the Mediterranean diet, we can prevent and fight diabetes, several types of cancer and cardio-vascular diseases

• BCFN's Double Food and Environment Pyramid can help adopt sustainable food models  

• More than 90% of water consumption (water footprint) can be referred to agriculture and food production, but by adopting sustainable diets, for instance by choosing vegetable proteins over animal proteins, we could reduce our impact on water resources 

• According to the Food Sustainability Index, Ethiopia, Australia and Colombia are the most virtuous countries in managing the water resources utilized for agricultural production

• In Italy, water management is in the good track, but it still import too much "virtual water" for food production

To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement, we need tools to guide the choices of decision makers and other stakeholders. BCFN co-organized the workshop 'Aligning initiatives to track progress towards a new global food system' at the 48th yearly World Economic Forum meeting, to present the Food Sustainability Index, created in partnership with The Economist Intelligence Unit as the guiding instrument to discover where food is really good because it is produced in the most sustainable way 

A new study “Food & Cities” presented at the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition’s 9th Annual Forum November 28 shows that cities can make sizeable contributions to reaching the UN’s 2030 the Sustainable Development Goals. Here are seven examples

Education, Best Practices and Concrete Solutions: a roadmap of commitments, in collaboration with UN SDSN, for sustainable development

• Riccardo Valentini, member of the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change – IPCC, Nobel Peace Laureate 2007, Raj Patel, Research Professor, Writer and Activist are few of the international experts which will take part to the BCFN International Forum on Food and Nutrition on November 27-28 at Milan's Pirelli HangarBicocca, working to transform the global food system

• Introducing the new report on 'Food and City': a first mapping of the most sustainable food policies in the world's greatest cities

• The Food Sustainability Index extends to 33 new countries, with a focus on the EU and Africa

• Getting ready for Su-Eatable life, the new project to reduce CO2 emissions and water footprints linked to food consumption

• Global Footprint Network and Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition Foundation have issued the alert: overshoot day has never come as early as this year

• Since 1970, we have been constantly "running out" of our natural resources sooner and sooner (about 30 days earlier every 10 years)

• Today our way of life is consuming the equivalent of 1.7 Earths

• But if we replaced our meat consumption with plant foods and cut food waste by 50%, we could push this date back by 38 days

• With #MoveTheDate, Global Footprint Network and BCFN suggest solutions to help us to save our Planet

• We are eating the Earth's resources: we consume more than the Planet is able to produce

• For the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition, food waste is one of the main causes of pollution and natural resource erosion: the water used to produce food that is not eaten is equivalent to the water flow of the river Volga

• If we want to achieve the Sustainability Goals and UN Agenda 2030, we need to rethink our relationship with food

Food designer, Innovator broker in agriculture and sustainable travel agent: these are the golden jobs in the world of agro-food. The first ever MOOC on sustainable food systems in the Mediterranean area is now online.

The initiative, now in its seventh edition, will award up to three € 20,000 research grants for projects with the potential to make a tangible contribution to improving the sustainability of our agri-food system.

Call for media professionals and emerging talent to enter Food Sustainability Media Award

Thomson Reuters Foundation and Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition announce winners of award recognising outstanding reporting of global food system challenges.

Announced Common Plans to Drive Action on the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda at First International Forum on Food and Nutrition in New York City

• On the football pitch, France, Brazil, Sweden and England are all in the running, but who's winning on the table for the sustainability of the food?

• Thanks to the Food Sustainability Index, BCFN analyzes best practices and policies of 34 countries best performing in terms of food loss and waste, sustainable agriculture and nutritional challenges.

• Italy, the big team missing from the football world cup, leads the way in sustainable agriculture but ranks low on nutritional challenges.

• To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals we have to recast the way we look at food holistically

• BCFN Foundation strengthens its efforts towards the global challenges through three International Fora on Food and Nutrition in 2018: Brussels, New York and Milan

• The Food Sustainability Media Award, in collaboration with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, recognizes the excellence in journalism to report on global food paradoxes (and provide concrete solutions)

• The Food Sustainability Index is a research tool to explore where food is really good, beyond taste

The Mediterranean basin is one of the top biodiversity hot spots in the world¹. It extends over an area - from the tip of Portugal to the shores of Lebanon, and from Italy to the coast of Morocco - which is influenced by different climate conditions and offers a range of evolving landscapes: high mountains, semi-arid plains, humid areas, sandy beaches and many islands of varying shapes and sizes.

However, farming in the Mediterranean is threatened by several factors, such as: unsustainable agricultural production, over-exploited natural resources, bad water management, or food products and diets characterized by low nutritional values.

Given this current background, which risks increasing inequality and damaging the environment, it is even more urgent to train students and practitioners by providing them with the tools to re-invent and re-imagine the way we produce food. This is why the MOOC, Massive Open Online Course, was developed: an online university course designed to offer an overview of the challenges and opportunities facing the Mediterranean agro food industry's ability to meet the  17 Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations' Agenda 2030.

THE BEST 5 PROJECTS FROM PAST EDITIONS 

● France remains in first place in the 2017 edition of the Food Sustainability Index (FSI), followed by Japan and Germany, with good performance across the FSI's three pillars (food loss and waste; sustainable agriculture; and nutritional challenges).

● Although richer countries tend to perform well in the FSI, high-income UAE ranks last, while low-income Ethiopia ranks a respectable 12th.

● The US languishes in 21st place, due to low scores for sustainable agriculture and nutritional challenges.

• Italians appear to be traditionalists when it comes to food: 3 in 4 do not feel ready to change their eating habits and prefer to eat Italian food, while 50% never go to foreign restaurants or buy and cook foreign foods

• However, 1 Italian in 2 thinks that their eating habits will change significantly over the next 10 years, mainly due to climate change (79.2%), but also because of the prices of ingredients (78.2%) and the impact of social media (70.4%)

• Nevertheless, this change will not bring about an increase in foreign food (only 47.4% think so) or in the consumption of insects (25%). Increases are, however expected to come thanks to organic food (68.8%), functional food (63.2%), and “zero-mile” food (59.7%).

• These are just some of the results of the survey carried out by Demos and the Barilla Foundation presented at BCFN’s 8thInternational Forum on Food and Nutrition 

From September 18 to November 10, an exhibition in the Belgian capital will explain “when food is produced sustainably”, “where the narrowest gap between hunger and obesity is” and “where the fight against food waste is most effective”. Organised by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition, this truly multi-sensory journey will get viewers involved and will demonstrate how much our dietary choices impact not only our health, but also the world we live in. The exhibit, along with the webinar scheduled for September 21 from 4-5 pm (www.barillacfn.com/webinar), is one of the main international events leading up to the BCFN’s next Forum on Food and Nutrition, taking place December 4-5 in Milan.

According to the Food Sustainability Index developed by the Barilla Foundation and The Economist Intelligence Unit, Italy comes in third among the countries which eat “too much”. Italians are currently the healthiest people in the world, thanks in part to the Mediterranean diet*, but our country may fall from the top spot due to a gradual deviation from this dietary model, especially among young people (1 in every 4 under-18s is overweight). And poor food choices, as well as harming our health, can also take their toll on the planet. With the arrival of summer – as we all try to get “beach ready” – here is a guide to rediscovering a healthy lifestyle through sustainable eating: 10 top tips for staying in shape without harming the environment

Water is a basic human right now formally recognised by the UN; however, 30,000 people still die every day from a lack of water and 1,000 children die from illnesses linked to unsafe water. Of the small percentage of water that is readily available on the planet, 70% is used for agriculture. Our food choices therefore could reduce our daily water footprint to 2,000 litres per capita. The BCFN and the Thomson Reuters Foundation have launched the Food Sustainability Media Award to focus public attention on the impact our food choices have on the environment and how we can make changes for the benefit of ourselves and the planet.

• An international event to discuss food and how our eating habits have an impact on our planet. World-renowned guests and a debate on food systems between Guido Barilla and Carlin Petrini.

• Over 1 billion migrants around the world, with food and climate change being among the root causes of this phenomenon. A newly released research conducted by MacroGeo and the BCFN Foundation was launched during the BCFN Forum on food and migration

• The Food Sustainability Index: France, Japan and Germany complete the top three, while Italy comes in seventh

• An Italian photographer and a reporter from the New York Times among the winners of the first edition of the Food Sustainability Media Award, in collaboration with the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Awards also went to media professionals from Canada, Ghana, Kenya and India

• The World Food Programme Italia is sponsoring the 8th edition of the BCFN Forum 

Come le nostre scelte alimentari impattano sull’ambiente; quali sono i Paesi che si stanno impegnando di più per pesare di meno sul Pianeta, cosa stiamo facendo per combattere lo spreco alimentare e come in cambiamenti climatici influenzano i flussi migratori, cambiando il nostro modo di approcciarci al cibo: sono questi e molti altri gli argomenti scelti dalla Fondazione per il Forum di quest’anno.

A parlarne anche Bob Geldof, attivista nella lotta alla fame nel mondo, Gunter Pauli, uno dei padri della blue economy e Jeffrey Sachs, saggista ed economista che ha ispirato Papa Francesco.

The summer holidays have arrived, and now, 1 in every 2 travellers chooses their destination based on the food on offer. But which countries eat the best overall, not just in terms of taste? Ranging from France’s holistic approach to tackling food waste (only 2.31% of the food produced is lost in the supply chain), to young farmers in Brazil (1 in 3 is under 24) and sustainable farming in Italy (-34% equivalent CO₂ emissions compared to traditional farming methods): the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation reveals the 5 countries which are already starting to change the world for the better (and where food lovers can choose to spend their holidays)

 • Coinciding with World Environment Day (5 June), and just a few days after the G7 summit in Taormina, the BCFN is shining the spotlight on the impact of agriculture on climate change.
 • 30% of greenhouse gas emissions come from food production, compared to 23.6% from heating and 18.5% from transportation. Farming alone produces 24% of global greenhouse gases and uses 70% of the world’s fresh water.
 • Italy stands out for its sustainable agriculture practices (in seventh place out of 15 nations on the Food Sustainability Index), but it’s still behind regarding the rate of young people and women working in agriculture and the average age of farmers (20th place on the Index), factors which are crucial to ensuring sustainable agricultural development in the future.
 • Things are starting to change, however: in Italy between 2014 and 2015, approximately 20,000 people under 30 joined the agricultural workforce (+12.4% compared to 1.1% of the overall economy), even if that number is still far off from those of France and Germany.
• The BCFN and the Milan Center for Food Law and Policy have launched the Food Sustainability Report: a quarterly document which aggregates and analyses important global topics related to food and sustainability.

To read the Food Sustainability Report, please visit www.foodsustainabilityreport.org

• 5.4 million people in Central Europe and 4.5 million in Mediterranean Europe: the number of “net” migrants between 2010 and 2015

• The majority of migrations occur within the African continent, “only” 10% choose Europe

• Each percentage increase in food insecurity compels 1.9% to migrate while a further 0.4% flee for every year of war

• Food production methods impact climate change (agriculture produces 24% of greenhouse gases)

• In Western Europe, “ethnic” domestic food is worth €3bn (and €10.5bn in the US)

• At the 8th Forum on Food and Nutrition, the Barilla Foundation and MacroGeo present the study “Food & Migration. Understanding the geopolitical nexus in the Euro-Mediterranean”

Two-thirds of the world’s population live in conditions of serious water scarcity for at least one month of the year. And yet, a person drinks on average two litres of water a day, and without realising it, we all use up to 5,000 litres of ‘virtual’ water per day in the food we eat. It is time to think again about our food systems. These are the key issues tackled in the third edition of the Food Sustainability Report, a quarterly summary document, developed by the BCFN and the Milan Center for Food Law and Policy, which helps to put the pressing global issues regarding food and sustainability in the spotlight. Read the Food Sustainability Report, visit: www.foodsustainabilityreport.org

Israel, the US and, rather surprisingly, Italy - which the Bloomberg Global Health Index named as the “healthiest” nation in the world thanks to its Mediterranean diet - are the countries where people eat “too much”, according to the Food Sustainability Index developed by the Barilla Foundation and the Economist Intelligence Unit. It is here where most effort will need to be put in to getting “beach ready” and getting back to a healthy lifestyle. The goal is to choose diets which are not harmful to our health, which help us get back in to shape and which do not harm the planet.  

Here are the Ten Commandments for a sustainable diet: 10 useful tips to help you keep in shape without weighing down the planet

In the run-up to Earth Day and the first anniversary of the signing of the Paris Agreement (COP21) on climate change, the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition Foundation and the Milan Center for Food Law and Policy are offering an innovative snapshot of how food production impacts the environment and land consumption in Italy and around the globe. Marking the occasion is the publication of the Food Sustainability Report: a quarterly document which serves as a “magnifying glass” to show institutions, the media, stakeholders, policy makers and society at large what the main international themes revolving around food and sustainability are. The first edition presents a true paradox: cultivation is on the rise, but hunger and famine are making dramatic inroads. And with the global population growth expected by 2050, the situation is becoming increasingly critical.

Read the Food Sustainability Report at: www.foodsustainabilityreport.org

An innovative case history on the topic of “water” and drought management is the winning project of the “BCFN, YES!” 2016 award. The project was presented by Anne-Teresa Birthwright and Shaneica Lester from the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, and it was selected as the best of BCFN YES! (Young Earth Solutions), the international competition open to young researchers under the age of 35 and promoted by the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) Foundation, which put together a research grant worth € 20,000. 

Check out the Barilla Foundation’s Proposal on www.milanprotocol.com Visit www.barillacfn.com to find out what ideas institutions, companies, and international food experts have for Expo2015.

To introduce students to the main subjects underpinning EXPO 2015 - “Nourish the Planet, Energy for Life”, which will be held in Milan from 1 May to 31 October 2015, the Fondazione per l’Educazione Finanziaria e al Risparmio, in collaboration with the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) Foundation, has developed the “Risparmiamo il Pianeta” educational programme, which is being presented at the 6th Forum on Food and Nutrition. Secondary school students will have the opportunity to take part in educational workshops and the presentation of the international finalist projects in the BCFN Young Earth Solutions! (BCFN YES!) competition.

WWF and Bioversity

Join the supporteres of the milan protocol

Experts from the WWF Italy and Bioversity International will contribute to define the content

of the Protocol by Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) for Expo 2015. On April 15 the first

Milan Protocol talk on www.protocollodimilano.it and www.milanprotocol.com