Theme for Nobel Conference 46 – Food and Nutrition

What makes food good? To ask this question in contemporary society is to enter an arena in which aesthetic, ethical, economic, agro-ecological and physiological definitions of goodness intertwine, clash and vie for eaters’ attention. Few issues seem to demand our attention so frequently—and on such visceral levels—as does our need for good food. The question “what should we eat?” takes on an urgency that is only partly generated by our rumbling stomachs. We receive daily reminders of the importance of answering this question correctly. Our health, and the health of our children, is determined to no small extent by our choices of diet—for those eaters fortunate enough to be able to make food choices. The health of planetary ecosystems similarly depends upon the foods we choose to grow—and how we choose to grow and process them. The economic wellbeing of persons around the globe is, to a significant degree, determined by the workings of the industrial-agricultural food system. If health, ecology and economy aren’t incentive enough, our food choices also carry considerable aesthetic and cultural significance; food is an important vehicle for transmitting and preserving ethnic heritage, regional identity and cultural pride.

Nobel Conference 2010 crosses disciplinary boundaries, to consider the ways in which these various definitions of goodness intersect with, challenge, and are challenged by, each other. Is it possible to create a food system, “from ground to gut,” that preserves the goodness of food in all these senses—aesthetic and economic, ethical and physiological, cultural and ecological? What would such a system look like—for eaters, growers, processors? Does one of these senses of goodness trump all others? Can one sense incorporate and accommodate all the others?

Conference lecturers are specifically invited to “boundary cross” by considering their own work in conversation with any of the following topics of contemporary interest: the local foods movement (“locavores”); commodity agriculture (“Big Agra”); food crops versus fuel crops; urban agriculture and community gardening; food supply safety; bioterrorism; school lunches; whole foods versus “neutraceuticals”; genetic modification of food plants and animals; protecting genetic diversity of food plants and animals; terroir and authenticity; molecular gastronomy; “supertasters.”