At the Festival we will also talk about the great theme of the topicality of food waste.
We will try to do it from a new environmental point of view but also from a health point of view, without forgetting the waste produced in the field and in companies that package and transform food, to try to analyze what information and communication they get to citizens when it comes to food when it comes to food he throws himself away.
Warming the last portion of lasagna, brought forward from the dinner the night before, and bringing it to the table is a widespread and virtuous habit, because, as the grandmothers taught, food should not be wasted. However, heated leftovers can hide pitfalls, especially if badly preserved. It is difficult for the consumer to understand what the good practices in terms of "food culture" really are, also because contradictory messages continue to arrive.
On the one hand, the cultural battle carried out by institutions such as the FAO, or the "antisprechi" law of the 2016 which, among other things, encourages restaurateurs to spread the "doggy-bag", the bag to take home the leftovers . On the other hand, the spread, especially on the web, of articles that emphasize the risks of consuming leftovers. This is not the usual hoaxes, but the opinion of accredited experts, such as Michael Mosley, a BBC science writer. And so, while in the babel of the web the messages are amplified and distorted, at the expense it is the consumer, increasingly confused and looking for answers: those that the next Festival of Food Journalism will try, precisely, to give, deepening the theme in several panels.
The question is not just to understand whether eating leftovers is good or bad (the answer is always the same, depending on how you do it), but adopting a responsible approach to information on a crucial issue such as food. Because the food is not thrown away, but with security you cannot play with it. Furthermore, the Festival will be an opportunity to take stock of the antisprecis law, on which it is time to draw up a budget, and on the good practices introduced recently. For example, that of the Zooprofilattico Institute of Piedmont, Liguria and Valle d'Aosta, which controls the quality of the food that ends up on our tables. The Institute has signed a protocol that allows the surplus of the sample to be tested to be distributed to the food bank, which previously were lost.
