Fourteenth International Conference on Food Studies, Politécnico de Portalegre, Portalegre, Portugal, October 02 - 04, 2024. Special Focus—Place Matters: The Valorization of Cultural, Gastronomic, and Territorial Heritage
Theme 1: Food Production and Sustainability
Exploring the environmental conditions of food production.
- Principles and practices of sustainable agriculture
- The green revolution
- The new green revolution
- Genetically modified foods
- Organic foods
- Natural disasters and the food supply
- Food production and the water supply
- Diversion of foods into biofuels
- Implications of transitions with growing affluence from grains, legumes and pulses, to meat and dairy
- Agricultural fossil fuel use and rising energy costs
- Soil depletion, exhaustion, erosion and fertilizers; and remedies
- Agricultural land availability and ‘peak food’
- Farmland preservation
- Urban agriculture
- Agriculture and deforestation
- Agricultural greenhouse gases and climate change; and remedies in agricultural carbon sequestration
- Hydroponic and low-carbon agriculture
- Farm originated and feedlot pollution
- Animal welfare
- Sustainability of wild fisheries and other wild food sources
- The environmental impact of seafood farms
- Waste management in food production and environmental sustainability
- The global food market
- Large scale and global agribusiness: efficiencies, offerings and deficiencies
- Community food security
- Sustainable food communities
- The local food movement
- Economics of farmers markets and community co-ops
- Urban and rural food deserts
- Supply chains: just-in-time distribution, transportation and warehousing
Theme 2: Food, Nutrition, and Health
Investigating the interrelationships of nutrition and human health.
- Human nutritional and dietary needs
- The chemistry of food, nutrition and human energy
- Food contamination and food-borne illness
- Food safety assurance, risk analysis and regulation
- Growth hormones and antibiotics in food, and their effects on children
- Food and chronic disease: obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes
- Food poverty
- The socially equitable diet
- Food, nutrition and public health
- Nutrition labeling
- Processed and unprocessed foods: health implications
- Safe fruit and vegetable processing in a global market
- Genetically modified foods and food engineering
- Foods and nanotechnology
- Food flavors, the taste of food and preferences
- Biotechnology and today’s food
- Food and global health challenges
- Consumer trends and nutritional behaviors
- Nutrition and disease management and prevention
- Food and the wellness industry
- Eating disorders
- Vitamin supplements and medical needs
- Food marketing to children
- Ethnic foods and community nutrition
Theme 3: Food Politics, Policies, and Cultures
Exploring claims, controversies, positions, interests and values connected with food.
- Urbanization, population growth and the global food supply
- The political economy of food
- Food prices inflation and food scarcity
- Food supply, transportation and storage
- Free markets versus agricultural protectionism and subsidies
- Farm law and public financing
- The impacts of developed world trade barriers on the developing world
- Hunger and poverty: public policy in food and nutrition
- WHO policies on world nutrition
- Global food ethics
- Farmers’ organizations and movements
- Farm worker rights
- Fast food and slow food
- Celebrity and media chefs
- Consumer ‘taste’
- Vegetarian, vegan and other dietary systems
- ‘Ethnic’ and regional foods
- Food taboos: kosher, halal etc.
- The cultures of ‘the table’
- Food sociability
- Gendered home cooking patterns
- School and community food gardens
- The alternative food movement
- Food advertising and food media
- Food safety regulations and guidelines
- Food self-sufficiency and ‘food sovereignty’
- ‘Fair Trade’
- Animal rights and welfare initiatives
- Food sovereignty and free trade regimes
- Malnutrition and international food programs