Restoring convivium to its value: daily moments of individual and collective regeneration
If each of us can vote through our forks, if each individual, with their daily habits and food choices, can approach not only sustainable development models, but regenerative, the moment of meal and convivium must return to play a central role: daily actions that know how to bring people closer to each other, their land, their territory, their identity and culture and care of the entire ecosystem. Striving for a regeneration and integrity of daily life, also through sharing the meal, therefore becomes essential.
The healing power of shared food
Convivium has been for millennia one of the main moments to which sociality is linked. It is not by chance that its etymological meaning is precisely live together. From the earliest forms of society, sharing the meal was never just a moment dedicated to satisfying physiological functions such as hunger, but it was enriched with deep meanings and values: nourishing the sense of community and communion, share knowledge, because food is much more than energy and nourishment. Food is family, experience, inclusion, identity.
not by chance Plutarchthinker of ancient Greece, said that "men do not put themselves at the table to eat but to eat together", praising the cult of hospitality; Dante Alighieri wrote an entire essay on Convivio, a 14-course banquet, true nourishment for body and spirit; Jesus Christ reveals his deepest teachings at the banquet.
But sharing the meal also strengthens solidarity and fills distances. Aristotle, in his treatise Politics, shares the importance of sharing meals to recreate within the community strong ties as it happens within the household and reducing antagonisms. It is no coincidence that today we speak of food as a powerful soft power and of the table as one of the most suitable places to unite and unite individuals, even during important agreements and negotiations. "Give me a good cook and I will give you a good treaty": So the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Charles Maurice de Talleyrand had addressed Napoleon, well aware that the delicacies of French cuisine could be a fundamental detail to achieve diplomatic success in the early nineteenth century.
Yet, looking at the photograph of today’s society, it is easy to guess how much of all that is left. Especially because of the pandemic, the moments of exchange and confrontation are decreased dramaticallythe moments of conviviality almost zero. The family dinners were the metaphor of the feeling of loneliness and disintegration that has permeated our lives, where everyone has been deprived of ties, generating disastrous consequences in terms of well-being and mental health. It is therefore no wonder that the erosion of social cohesion and the deterioration of mental health are included among the most worrying risks for the world in the next two years, as revealed by the Global Risk Report 2022.
Food is then a metaphor of gift, of wealth, of exchange. We feed because we need and around a table we discover that we are all extremely equal, we are equal and no one can feel superior. For this reason, convivium is also an instrument of peace and conflict resolution, and in this historical moment, studded with wars and contrasts, it is an indispensable moment to be able to return to our basic needs, reconnect to other people and to Earth, mother and giver of indispensable goods.
A Europe in support of human solidarity
The European Union has not expressly shaped its political strategies by dealing with conviviality in the strict sense, except for specific European cooperation projects, such as the project 4Cs (From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture), launched to stimulate and nurture an intercultural dialogue and special occasions of conviviality, such as that recently occurred between theAmbassador of the European Union to Morocco and young Moroccan boys to reflect on the European Union-Morocco partnership and joint initiatives on education, training, capacity building, mobility, social inclusion and support for entrepreneurship.
Yet solidarity between Member States is one of the fundamental pillars of the European Union’s founding pact. And conviviality is the close sister of solidarity, one is the presupposition of the other.
Since in the EU over the 5% of the population is composed of people born outside European political borders, it is essential to integrate these millions of people with the remaining citizens of the continent and for this the European Union is integrating a new framework more easily allowing exchange without flattening, so as to emphasize the importance of mutual relations. The same EU Green Deal only makes sense if thought inside a framework of solidarityIt is unthinkable to believe that we can achieve such ambitious results without strong cooperation at grass-roots level between the Member States and without the same sense of belonging and community as those of a cohesive union it will not be possible to meet objectives which can only be achieved in collective optics.
Lastly, solidarity It was the basis for the European action plan to tackle the pandemic crisis and the key to dealing with the war crises that are taking place on our continent and that have impacted, albeit not in an equal way, the lives of all of us.
Regenerate the world one fork at a time
If food is for the Future Food Institute the pivotal tool and means with which we can regenerate the world in an integrated and integral way, then the physical sharing of food, understood in its power of union and reunion between people and people with the territory, is crucial to creating more resilient, united and aware communities. Because it is precisely starting from the awareness of everyday gestures, such as eating together, that we can understand our impact on the world around us and on every living being that is part of it.
For this reason, the heart of many activities and initiatives of the Future Food Institute have placed at the center the conviviality and its magnificent regenerative power, individual, social, identity and environment.
Even when the pandemic forced us to stay away. It was because of Climate Suppers, an integral part of our Boot Camp in digital version, the opportunity to pay homage to the banquet, even if at a distance, discuss eating habits, discover local varieties and share thoughts and reflections that come from food to touch climate change, traditions, identity.
But it is above all from our Living Lab in Pollica, at the heart of the Mediterranean and the Emblematic Community of the Mediterranean Diet, that the power of conviviality has been relaunched with power and exponential results. Because as theUNESCO, which elevates the Mediterranean Diet as the intangible cultural heritage of humanity, one of the undisputed cornerstones of this lifestyle is to promote "Social interaction, since communal eating is the basis of social customs and festivities shared by a certain community, has given rise to a remarkable body of knowledge, songs, maxims, tales and legends."
Food in the Mediterranean Diet is a lifestyle in which time is valued, as a deep connection between the natural, social and inner dimensions; food that unites and reconnects lives and people, not only with each other but also with the territory and the Earth. An exchange that sees not only the engine but also the product itself, because what we celebrate today as the Mediterranean Diet was born from the meeting of the peoples who had populated this area rich in unexplored resources, exchanges, contaminations, meetings. Through this reconnection to our roots we can rediscover ourselves as part of a communityand not as small particles living on autonomous life.
For this reason, every event, conference, initiative, path carried out in Pollica, could only end with the sharing of the meal. From our Boot Camps in presence of the celebrations of the Mediterranean Diet, from the Week of Italian Cuisine in the world to the recent European week of agrifood.
The convivium becomes the protagonist and means to discover the protagonists of food, to share knowledge bringing the field on the table, to live directly the identity culture of a territory. "Trame mediterranee - From land to banquet" It was an opportunity to rediscover the conviviality and live being together, starting from the ancestral source of enrichment and fil rouge of our lives: food.
But the convivium at Future Food is seen and interpreted as a tool for sharing and integration, a bridge to peace between people and different worlds, a preferential communication channel, which passes not from words, but from collective and shared human values. For this reason we have promoted a fundraising for Ukraine, which always centered around the table, our reference place, in order to bring to the attention of the participants the true essence of coexistence, that is, exchange and solidarity. Future Food deals with food, but food is a vector of relationships - with people, with nature, with ecosystems - and convivium is the lifeblood that allows the existence of these links, symbol and emblem of a much deeper commitment that goes far beyond the mere sharing of nourishment, but that is instead nourishment for the spirit and souls.
Because every time we gather around a table we find ourselves honoring the past, living the present and preparing ourselves to build the future.
