What the world contains

June 7, 2026

As the summer solstice nears, I feel the tug. The urge. The pressure to do things differently. Read 10 books! Swim every day! Have meeting-less workdays! I scheme in grandiose ways, convinced this will finally be my "summer of quiet," carefully crafting elaborate to-do lists (therein lies problem #1). I tell myself I’ll finally live and work on my own terms, freed from the weekly teaching schedules and the usual semester onslaught. Everyone else is on holiday, right? The emails will slow down…yes?

In one sense, it’s all true. But after fifty-four years on this grand planet, you’d think I would have learned by now. Summers come and go, just like the seasons and the years. And sometimes, they just aren't the summers of your life.

Back in August 2019, I wrote a blog entry titled "Su-Su-Summertime Sadness." In it, I confessed:

“My summers always haunt me. The could’ves, the should’ves, the would’ves. I could have done more with my summer, or I could have done less. I should have done what the Italians do and taken a whole month off to celebrate Ferragosto.”

I even put together a playlist to mark the end of the season, which only succeeded in draining the last of my ambition.

I think this notion of “this is going to be the best summer ever” starts back in elementary school or junior high. Remember those days? Once you finished whatever house and yard chores your mom left for you, the rest of the summer was yours. You went swimming sans sunscreen until your hands were shriveled-up prunes (they were different times, my dear readers). You rode your bike with your amigos down to the 7-Eleven for a Smarties candy necklace, washed it down with a Slurpee, and played kickball into the depths of the night with the neighborhood kids until you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face.

Total freedom.

We made our own lunches and were entirely on our own. No longer mandated to eat cafeteria school “lunches.” My personal favorite? Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup with Lays sour cream and onion potato chips crumbled on top. Variant B was Campbell’s Golden Mushroom soup, sprinkled with Ruffles cheddar-and-sour-cream potato chips. All of it was washed down with a Pepsi and finished off with a Ding Dong or a Ho Ho. Honestly, it is incredible that I am still alive…(don’t hate me Carlos Monteiro!). We were, after all, living that middle-class suburban American life (think 80s: ET, Poltergeist, Sixteen Candles, ya’ll).

I used to beat myself up for not being "productive" enough during the summer. But lately, as some of you know, I’ve been practicing “niksen.” It’s a Dutch term that means intentionally doing nothing without a purpose or a deadline—just gazing out the window, taking in the scenery, and letting your mind wander. The Italians, of course, have elevated this to an art form.

This art form is known as dolce far niente—the sweetness of doing nothing (Yes, it was popularized by Eat, Pray, Love, but let’s look past that, dear readers). Come summer, they take oziare (to laze about) quite literally. Most of the country shuts down for the entire month of August so everyone can head to the beach, the mountains, or all’estero (abroad) for some R&R. This whole phenomenon is called Ferragosto. Technically, it’s just one official holiday on August 15th. But in true Italian fashion, they looked at one day and thought, “Why not take the whole goddamn month?”

Perché no?

The tradition dates back to 18 BC with the Feriae Augusti, when Emperor Augustus declared a period of rest for agricultural workers. Fast forward a couple of millennia, and it’s still the best excuse on the planet to completely unplug.

I am still working on my niksen (or oziare) skillzzz, but I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. I also promised myself I’d travel less, and boy, have I delivered. One can rarely find Jess Fanzo at a conference anymore. I did make an exception to attend UN Nutrition Week in Rome. I genuinely enjoyed many of the sessions, but my god... the UN really needs to jazz it up. The format is stuck in the past: static panels, formal posturing, dry delivery, and zero audience interaction. The core content is incredibly important, but there has to be a better way to communicate global messages than having a row of people make disconnected, five-minute statements. The irony is that this meeting couldn't have come at a more crucial time. And there were so many fantastic experts in the room who understand deeply how to scale nutrition to the places where it is needed most. Nutrition is chronically underfunded, and global food crises are mounting. Rather than slipping into insular navel-gazing, this forum needs to expand. We need to invite more than just the usual UN crowd and build real, inclusive bridges across different sectors.

From Rome, we took a short trip to visit friends in Napoli—one of our absolute favorite places in Italy, even if the city is beautifully, brilliantly insane. The food alone is worth the chaos. As a pescetarian, Naples is pure heaven. The ultra-fresh mozzarella di bufala that practically weeps when you cut into it, bowls of spaghetti alle vongole packed with local clams, and my god, the wood-fired pizza.

But beneath all that incredible food and vibrant street life, there is a haunting uncertainty to Naples. You can't escape the looming presence of its geology. The entire region sits on a massive, restless volcanic system—from the ominous silhouette of Vesuvius to the steaming, sulfurous bradyseism of the Solfatara craters, constantly reminding you of the earthquakes bubbling just below the surface.

While we were there, we watched the gorgeously shot Pompeii Under the Clouds. It’s a film that somehow does nothing but everything all at once—capturing the beautiful, eerie reality of a defiant city that lives, eats, and thrives completely in the shadow of a ticking clock.

..So, remember that ironclad promise I just mentioned about traveling less? Well, the rest of this summer will feature a quick trip to Brighton—to see our good buddy Lawrence Haddad and his family—followed by an Annual Review of Nutrition editorial meeting in London. Then, it's off to Kraków and Warsaw, Poland, for the 10th Annual Conference on Agricultural Statistics. And this year, for the first time, I am actually using up my Ferragosto card — we will spend all of August in Napoli caring for our friends’ place (with a f*#* off view), visiting the islands, amongst the rumbles. And come fall? I am jetting off to much farther-flung places, including Ethiopia and Indonesia. I swear I am still practicing my niksen... I might just have to do it from an airplane seat.

All of these reflections, contradictions, and journeys just leave me thinking about how incredibly lucky I am, how lucky many of us are. And how many of us are not. It is so easy, so privileged for me to say this, right? Particularly in a time when there is so much darkness, so much hate, so much strife in the world. The United States. Gaza, Lebanon, Iran. Sudan. Ethiopia. Ebola. Epstein. The list goes on and on. I recently came across a beautiful piece in The Atlantic written by Alan Lightman, titled "The Ordinary Miracle of Existing." He captures this exact feeling of existential gratitude perfectly:

“Just as our entire planet is a speck in the cosmos, our individual lives are fleeting moments in the grand unfolding of time. And, as the Buddhists always emphasize, everything is impermanent. Everything passes away. The ancient cities of Sumeria and Egypt are long gone, as are the temples of ancient Greece and Rome. Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire; Port Royal of Jamaica; the English coastal village of Dunwich. All gone. All that we see around us today will one day be gone. Against this backdrop of history, on Earth and in the cosmos, our individual lives are brief flickers in the chasms of time. It is hard to imagine such a cavernous theater we find ourselves in. But it is even more difficult to fathom how unique each of us is, how improbable, how lucky to be alive at all.”

Striking, isn't it? Especially when you consider how much we try to pack into our brief flickers of summers, of seasons, of well, years. He goes on to note:

“Little by little, we humans gain an understanding of what the world contains. We socialize, we read, we travel, we experience. But, in hindsight, our perspective remains highly limited.”

What the world contains. What the world contains is ultimately a mirror of how we choose to move through it. It forces us to ask: how do we want to live the days we are given? When we realize how small our vantage point truly is, the pressure to "do it all" gives way to a deeper desire to simply live well. It's a humbling reminder as we all head into this summer solstice. We explore as much as we can, we chase the perfect summer, and we try to find moments to simply be. Our perspective is only ever a tiny slice of a massive, beautiful picture—but how lucky we are to get to see it at all.

Earthset captured through the Orion spacecraft window at 6:41 p.m. ET on April 6 during the Artemis II crew's flyby of the moon.

Su-su-summertime sadness

August 18, 2019

Summer is coming to an end and Lana Del Ray’s song, su-su-summertime, summertime sadness keeps running through my head. Not sure if I am sad it is coming to an end, or sad that it wasn’t the summer I dreamed it would be. But is it ever? Summer always starts with such high hopes. The stretched-out days, sun-drenched bronzed skin, quality time with nature whether it be in water or atop mountains, relaxing nights in the backyard, vacations, beaches. A time when the livin’ is easy. When “laziness finds respectability.” As Charles Bowden said, “summertime is always the best of what might be.”

Summer conjures up inspiration. Just think of the vast number of songs that have eloquently articulated that summertime feeling. Sly and the Family Stone, War, Bananarama, the Isley Brothers, Childish Gambino, the Motels, Seals and Crofts, Don Henley, Death Cab for Cutie, Lana Del Ray, The Lovin’ Spoonful, to name a few.

The posted playlist is just a sampling of “summer” songs. I purposely chose songs that had “summer” in the title, but clearly there are so many songs about summer, the anticipation of it, or the experience of it. Think Alice Cooper’s “Schools out for Summer”, The Go Gos “Vacation”, The Ramones “Rockaway Beach”, and anything by the Beach Boys…

Remember when square Sandy and T-bird Danny reminisce about their summer affair “summer lovin’ had me a blast, summer lovin’ happened so fast” in Grease? Oh the fleeting moments of young, summer romance…We’ve all been there.

But my favorite summer (sad) song has to be from Jonathan Richman of the Modern Lovers.

That summer feeling
When there's things to do not because you gotta
When you run for love not because you oughtta
When you trust your friends with no reason not ta (nada)
The joy I name shall not be tamed
And that summer feeling is gonna haunt you
One day in your life.

My summers always haunt me. The could’ves, the should’ves, the would’ves. I could have done more with my summer, or I could have done less. I should have done what the Italians do and take a whole month off to celebrate Ferragosto. I would have gone to the beach this summer and worked on my tan but alas, I don’t want to look like Keith Richards, an old leather shoe with lips.

So what the hell does this post have to do with food you may be asking yourself? Indulge me for just a few minutes more.

When I got to thinking about writing a post about summer and what it means for all things food, it got me thinking about seasons. The beginning of one season, ends another season. I feel that years go by faster when a place experiences four seasons - winter, spring, summer and fall. It can be refreshing - shedding skin, birth and death, light and dark. Winter is often associated with death, old age, pain, loneliness, despair or an end. Yikes. Spring is almost always associated with rebirth, renewal, hope. Summer, well, we have already expunged that season enough, but it does symbolize fullness, joy, and dare I say, freedom. August, often means bounty, change, maturity and maybe some anticipation of decay...

When you live in a place like Arizona or California in the US, or in the southern tropics, you have sort of two seasons - hot and less hot, wet and dry. Back in 2009, David Lynch would annoyingly remind us on a daily basis of the wonderful, consistent, balmy weather in Los Angeles. And he wasn’t fibbing. Way to rub salt in the wounds of us New Yorkers struggling to stay alive amidst the bleak snow-covered streets and dead plantation.

The Earth’s tilt toward the sun and its trips around the sun dictates the cycle of seasons. The longest and shortest day of the year occur when Earth's axis is either closest or farthest from the sun also known as the summer and winter solstices.

Equinoxes are another significant day during Earth's journey around the Sun. On these days, the planet's axis is pointed parallel to the Sun, rather than toward or away from it. The spring, or vernal, equinox for the northern hemisphere takes place on the same day as the south's autumnal equinox and vice versa.

Seasons are so critical for food. Seasons bring different harvests of food that contribute to the diversity and quality of our diets. There are many studies out here looking at the seasonal affects associated with access to and availability of foods. Studies in Ghana, Bangladesh, and Malawi show that seasonality is a key element to food availability in many low-income countries, what is often called “local seasonality.” Seasonality impacts food access often through food prices of even the most basic staple foods. In many high-income countries, people don’t even think about seasons. You can get anything you want, any time of the year, what is called “global seasonality.” Blackberries in January, apples in June, corn in April. All completely off-season from when they could actually be harvested in the United States. Thank you global trade (take note Potus). We have become completely disconnected from the agrarian calendar. But more on that in a minute.

Jenny MacDiarmid, a fantastic researcher in Scotland, asked whether eating seasonal foods contributes to a more sustainable diet. One could argue that demanding global seasonality in a diet would provide nutritional benefits by increasing diversity of the diets, particularly perishable foods, but it could have high environmental costs. MacDiarmid argues that greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) of globally seasonal food are not necessarily higher than food produced locally as it depends more on the production system used than transportation. She wrote: “Adopting a global seasonality approach to food supplies may not have major consequences for GHGE but to meet demands it could create greater water stress in already water scarce countries. A similar argument could be made against increasing the global supply of fresh food year-round because of the increased land it will require, which will have knock-on effects for loss of environmental biodiversity.”

The agrarian or farm calendar is essentially the same as the crop calendar which is a time tool on when to plant, sow, and harvest local crops based in specific agro-ecological zones or landscapes. FAO has a bunch of examples based on crop or country. Here is an example of Nigeria. Yams looks like a solid bet for year-round food. This calendar shows maize across a few countries. It shows how diverse the planting and harvesting seasons are across the world, with some places getting in two harvests of corn per year.

It was always thought that the United States school year calendar was based on the agrarian calendar. The idea is to keep kids at home during the summer months (June through August), the most active time to plant and harvest. I even thought that was true. Turns out, it is not. Rural and urban schools had different calendars but summer was just a logical time for teachers and students to take breaks. According to this Washington Post article, “In the early 1800s, agrarian communities generally operated public schools for a winter and a summer term of two to three months each. The spring and fall, labor-intensive times for farming, featured no school. During the summer — no less important an agricultural season — older children were typically absent from school, since families counted on their labor.” Interesting. The myth of the United States education system still rooted in ancient agrarian times is a myth after all.

And if one were to look at the seasonal calendar of the United States, it would be near impossible to line that up with the current school year calendar of the country. The sheer diversity in temperatures, what is grown, where, and when, would put a child in each region of the country in a different academic calendar year, were it to be dependent on our farm systems. The harvest calendar of the United States based on temperature is shown on the right.

Seasonality also brings challenges associated with malnutrition. Due to seasonal variability of food production, dietary intake, food security and morbidity in the developing world, many children suffer from impaired growth or acute malnutrition issues. Seasonal malnutrition is often tied to disease burden brought on by seasons - rainy seasons bring about diarrhea incidence as one example. Stephen Devereux and colleagues published a PLoS paper about seasonal hunger and showed the patterns linking severe acute malnutrition and malaria during the rainy season in Niger.

Vaitla B, Devereux S, Swan SH (2009) Seasonal Hunger: A Neglected Problem with Proven Solutions. PLoS Med 6(6): e1000101. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000101

Interestingly, when one searches for reviews in PubMed on seasonality and stunting (54 articles) or wasting (4) or undernutrition (220), very little emerges with most articles involving Vitamin D specifically. It shows how little the nutrition community pays to seasonality - which impacts interpretations of research findings of timed surveys and interactions with disease burden, programming and policy interventions. Andy Prentice has been studying seasonality for a good long time in The Gambia, and he wrote a paper back in 1994 on the topic. Crazy. Action Against Hunger wrote about it as a “missing link” a few years ago, arguing that seasonality rarely get attention by governments.

But how are seasons changing with climate change and what will this mean for malnutrition and our food security? A lot. We wrote about the seasonal affects on malnutrition in the context of near-term weather events, like El Nino and La Nina in the Global Nutrition Report in 2015 with Madeleine Thomson of Wellcome Trust. The report (check out chapter 6), articulates that for the poorest groups, the seasonal cycles of food availability, infection, and time use remain a significant challenge to nutrition security and provide a stark indicator of the vulnerability of populations to climate risk. The figure below shows how stunting varies by month of birth for Indian children under the age of three.

Stunting variation in India based on season (Global Nutrition Report 2015)

We also wrote about the impacts of seasonality in the context of climate change on the entirety of the food system. Forecasts of the future climate— whether short-term seasonal anomalies or long-term climate change scenarios—may also impact production and consumption patterns, price hikes of food staples, and social stability. And with climate change, the length and intensity of our seasons are getting harder to predict and harder to control. Farmers are challenged and will continue to be challenged.

Seasons. They are essential for the foods we grow, the diets we consume and our overall wellbeing. Seasons fill in the gaps and pauses that the world makes. But they are shifting, shaping and changing. Much of that due to the anthropocene.

My favorite season? You guessed it. Summer. But that summer feeling haunts me. As much as I want to hold onto it and its cumulative memories, it is gone as soon as it arrives. Although I tend to get sad when summer ends, I am glad when it comes around with each passing year.