From Roman Ruins to Bolognese Bliss

We’ve spent most of late October and November in Italy, preparing for our permanent move to Bologna. Being away from the United States has been refreshing — I catch up on the news less often and with far less emotion. From afar, everything seems a bit bonkers. For anyone feeling overwhelmed by it all, and who has the chance to travel outside the U.S., I highly recommend it. It offers a powerful perspective.

The CFS plenaries largely empty.

Our journey began in Rome with a meeting at the Food and Agriculture Organization, whose building now feels almost impenetrable. I attended the Committee on Food Security (CFS), which was eerily quiet. The current Director General of FAO seems to have shifted focus away from the CFS, scheduling World Food Day a week earlier—a move that, frankly, deflates the committee’s momentum. The sessions were muted, with scant government presence. Even the plenaries were only a quarter full.

Perhaps multilateral cooperation and globalism are truly fading, as Richard Horton recently suggested here and here. We’ll see how the world responds at COP30 in Brazil, tackling the urgent challenge of climate change. Sadly, I agree with a recent New York Times article arguing that governments—not just the U.S.—are turning their backs on climate commitments. There are isolated successes, but the overall climate data is grim. The UN’s annual emissions gap report, “Off Target,” warns that countries are unlikely to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the Paris Agreement’s main goal. Experts predict warming could reach between 2.3 and 2.5 degrees Celsius, or even higher if current pledges aren’t met.

Long lines at Da Enzo

Back to Bella Italia. My partner and I have spent nearly five cumulative years living in Rome. When we first arrived in 2010, those felt like golden years. Tourism was present but manageable, with many hidden gems for eating, drinking, and soaking in the vast cityscape. Today, forget it. Rome has turned into a theme park resembling a mockable Roman empire, swarming with tourists. Even secret spots are overrun by huge lines of people eager to replicate the Instagrammable moments. Our favorite place, Da Enzo, now has block-long lines. We used to pop in spontaneously for carbonara and puntarella. It’s sad—Rome and much of Italy have sold themselves cheaply, like a dollar store bonanza.

After Rome’s disappointment, we went to Napoli to visit friends. The city, too, is suffocating under endless tourists—around 5,000 daily from massive cruise ships—who come to eat pizza, drink spritzes (a drink actually invented in Veneto, northern Italy), and walk the “elephant walk” through Spaccanapoli buying cornicelli charms (little horn-shaped amulets for good luck), all because social media told them to. They don’t really experience the city or stay overnight, retreating to their ships for dinner and sleep. Locals believe tourism boosts the economy, and it probably does—but at what cultural cost? Is this growth sustainable? Naples, too, has given itself away. The New York Times article, “The Spritzes and Carbonaras That Ate Italy,” argues tourism has blanketed the country in a uniform food culture. Maybe not everywhere, but it’s heading that way. Nothing can take away the beauty of these places, but god damn, it is getting hard to see it.

Naples wasn’t all bad, once you are off the beaten path. Walks along and swims in the bay of Naples, insanely delicious pizza and vongole, and a lecture at the University of Naples Federico II Agriculture College were highlights. The College is in a beautiful old royal palace in another part of Naples, called Portici. The palace was built as a summer house for the Spanish viceroys on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. The college curates a beautiful botanical garden on its grounds. The students and faculty were truly wonderful — they energized me to start teaching this spring in Bologna.

Typical aperitivo for two - and costing less than 8 euros…

From Naples, we took the train north to Bologna, and suddenly it felt dramatically calmer—fewer tourists, more progressive energy. The “Quadrilatero” district, a historic medieval market full of gourmet shops near the main piazza, was surprisingly uncrowded. Bologna is a beautiful city bathed in warm orange and yellow hues, with miles of elegant porticos offering sheltered promenades. The city pulses with the energy of its students—the University of Bologna is Europe’s oldest university. Street art decorates many corners, and the local “aperitivo” culture thrives. Bolognese gather around 6 p.m. for wine, cocktails, and small free snacks (why do potato chips taste so good with sparkling white wine - drats!), with weekends seeing aperitivo start even earlier.

There are downsides. The weather is more like NY, and the air quality ain’t good. But it feels like a progressive, productive city that has a certain gothy, young vibe. Will we be able to sit out on our terrace 365 days a year, ala Rome? No. But would I take this over the tourism hellscape? Hells yah.

Bolognese cuisine is delicious but hearty and meat-heavy. Classics like tortellini, lasagna, and ragù are all rich with meat. The pasta contains eggs—a nod to the north’s wealthier past where eggs were added to flour and water—resulting in specialties like tortellini, ravioli, and tagliatelle. The region is famous for its Parmesan cheese, Sangiovese red wine, and balsamic vinegar. Pork is beloved. There’s a dish called Cotoletta (or Petroniana), essentially veal fried in butter, topped with prosciutto, smothered in Parmesan and meat broth—a literal heart-stopper. Hopefully, we’ll find ways to stay more plant-based here, but dining out in typical Bolognese trattorias might make that a challenge. Mamma mia…

These pasta dishes were delicious but probably did not “meat” the criteria of the EAT-Lancet Commission (Mio Dio!).

When we arrived, Bologna was hosting the “Villaggio contadino Coldiretti,” a fair spread across the city’s piazzas. Farmers from across Italy gathered to celebrate “the centrality of the agricultural world, sustainability, and the value of Italian food.” Coldiretti represents over 1.6 million Italian farmers and agricultural entrepreneurs, advocating fiercely for “Made in Italy” products. They lobby against lab-grown meat, expose agromafia issues, and protest unfair trade price speculation. Some argue these “village” events misuse public spaces and they have ties to the conservative right in the country. I suspect their views on the EAT-Lancet Commission wouldn’t be glowing either…

 

Food Bytes: September 2025 Edition

FOOD BYTES IS A (ALMOST) MONTHLY BLOG POST OF “NIBBLES” ON ALL THINGS CLIMATE, FOOD, NUTRITION SCIENCE, POLICY, AND CULTURE.

Food Bytes is back after taking August off (already practicing my ferragosta!). I think I say this every month, but it is hard to keep up with all the fantastic science and reports coming out. So let’s get to it.

The “Feeding Profit” report, published by UNICEF, argues that today’s food environments are systematically failing children by flooding markets and everyday spaces with cheap, ultra-processed foods that are aggressively marketed, thereby limiting access to nutritious choices. The data support this. Globally, 5% of children under the age of 5 and 20% of children and adolescents aged 5–19 live with overweight, and for the first time in 2025, obesity among 5–19-year-olds (9.4%) has overtaken underweight (9.2%). In many low- and middle-income countries, the prevalence of overweight individuals has more than doubled since 2000, and these countries now account for 81% of the global overweight burden (compared to 66% in 2000). The report finds that children’s diets are increasingly dominated by ultra-processed foods and sugary drinks, displacing more nutritious options, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, pulses, and animal-source foods (see the figure on the right). It highlights that for infants and children aged 6–23 months, only a minority meet minimum acceptable diet standards — e.g., globally, ~61% meet the minimum meal frequency standard, but only ~32% achieve the minimum dietary diversity (i.e., ≥ 5 food groups). It emphasizes that food environments—encompassing pricing, availability, marketing, and convenience—strongly shape diet quality, and that poor diets are not merely individual choices but are structurally driven by unhealthy food systems that food and beverage companies often interfere with and manipulate. Finally, it advocates for reforms such as reallocating agricultural and trade subsidies toward nutritious foods, regulating marketing and labeling, and enhancing social protection to make healthy diets more accessible and affordable.

Speaking of unhealthy foods, the Nature article, “Are ultra-processed foods really so unhealthy? What the science says,” scrutinizes whether the broadly used category of ultra-processed foods is scientifically justified, arguing that the classification may be overly heterogeneous to guide nutrition policy. While numerous observational studies link the consumption of ultra-processed foods to obesity, metabolic disease, and mortality, critics counter that many of these associations stem from confounding factors (e.g., overall diet quality, energy intake) rather than the definition of ultra-processed foods itself. The piece calls for improved definitions, mechanistic studies, and nuance in policy action, suggesting that a one-size-fits-all ban or tax on these foods may misfire without a clearer scientific basis. I think many working in this space disagree….

The study “Benchmarking progress in non-communicable diseases” analyzes changes in cause-specific mortality across 185 countries from 2010 to 2019, utilizing age-specific death rates and life-table methods to estimate the probability of dying from non-communicable diseases before the age of 80. During that period, non-communicable disease mortality declined in 82% of countries for females and 79% for males; however, the pace of decline slowed compared to 2001–2010, and in a minority of countries, the probability increased. Circulatory diseases contributed most to mortality reductions, while neuropsychiatric disorders, pancreatic and liver cancers, and diabetes offset gains in many settings.

Moving on to the area of sustainable diets, an interesting report , Meat vs EAT, was released last week, revealing a coordinated online backlash against the EAT Lancet Commission report. The backlash was driven by a network of 100 mis-influencers responsible for nearly 50% of posts and over 90% of engagement during the initial backlash. ​ Key hashtags, such as #Yes2Meat, reached 26 million people, surpassing the 25 million reached by pro-EAT-Lancet posts, with critical messages being shared six times more frequently than supportive ones (see Figure to the left). ​ Industry ties were evident, while mis-influencers monetized their advocacy through books, subscriptions, and events. None of this is shocking. With the second Commission report coming out this week, and the current global political turmoil, it will be interesting to see how they address the Commission's findings and its scientists. Their playbook? Attack the scientists, not the science. Boooo!

Let’s stay on this broad topic. A new study highlights the significant health impacts of anthropogenic climate change, including deaths, illnesses, and disabilities, with a focus on heat-related mortality, extreme weather events, and diseases like malaria and dengue. While most research has concentrated on high-income countries and temperature-related risks, recent studies have expanded to include air pollution, child health, and displacement, revealing substantial economic losses valued in billions annually. ​ The authors emphasize the need for more geographically diverse and equitable research, particularly in the global south, to better understand and address the health consequences of climate change.

Speaking of climate change, this study uses US household food purchase data (2004–2019) linked with meteorological records to quantify the effect of temperature on added sugar consumption. Results show that intake rises sharply between 12 °C and 30 °C (~0.7 g °C⁻¹), driven primarily by sugar-sweetened beverages and frozen desserts, with disproportionately larger effects among lower-income and less-educated groups. Projections under a 5 °C warming scenario suggest average daily added sugar intake will rise by ~3 g per person by 2095, exacerbating nutrition-related health risks and inequalities. Interesting study? Yes, we need to understand how climate extreme events impact dietary quality and nutrition outcomes. But are the findings significant? Probably not…3 grams of sugar ain’t much…

And to pivot a bit, the Lancet published "Getting back on track to meet global anaemia reduction targets: a Lancet Haematology Commission." The Commission assesses why the world is far off track to meet global anaemia reduction targets and provides a roadmap to get efforts back on course. As it stands, anaemia affects nearly 2 billion people worldwide, and most countries are far off track to meet reduction targets. Five takeaways:

  1. Anaemia has multiple drivers, from poverty, food insecurity, and poor WASH to infections, chronic diseases, and inherited blood disorders. Recognising this complexity is key to designing context-specific solutions.

  2. Reliable surveillance is patchy. Nearly half of the countries lack recent national anaemia data for women or children, and almost none collect comprehensive cause-specific information. Better integrated data platforms are urgently needed.

  3. Iron deficiency remains the leading cause, but infections, inflammation, micronutrient deficiencies, blood loss, and environmental stressors (like air pollution and climate change) all play major roles. Interventions must address this whole spectrum.

  4. Reducing anaemia requires strong governance across health, nutrition, and social sectors. Equity and human rights should be central, ensuring programmes reach the most vulnerable while being tailored to local contexts.

  5. The current WHO target of a 50% reduction by 2030 is unattainable with existing tools. A new evidence-based framework suggests a more realistic 12–22% global reduction, with country-specific goals that balance ambition and feasibility.

A companion article, “Anaemia in a time of climate crisis” published by your Food Archiver surveys how climate change — through effects like extreme heat, altered rainfall, and reduced agricultural yields — threatens to exacerbate global anaemia. It argues that vulnerable populations (especially women and children) in already high-burden settings will face worsening micronutrient deficits unless interventions integrate climate resilience into nutrition and health systems.

Gotta love Molly, oh how I miss the 80s!

A few interesting media pieces for your reading pleasure:

  • Sushi has become the grab-and-go, convenient food. Interesting how something raw has become so mainstream. (love the shoutout to Molly Ringwald in Breakfast Club)

  • An article on the beauty and craft of pizza.

  • I recently traveled to Mexico City and had a hard time finding good Mexican food. Why? Damn gringos are all moving there demanding, you guessed it, sushi and pizza.

  • Fantastic piece by Illana Schwartz, a Columbia University climate student, on the climate vulnerability of NY’s food supply, particularly the Hunts Point Cooperative Market, the point of distribution for 35 percent of the meat that enters the five boroughs. That’s more than 1 billion pounds of meat annually.

  • A Guardian article on why meat’s contribution to climate is often ignored by the media.

  • Breaking the trend of consolidation, Kraft Heinz, the makers of Kraft Mac and Cheese, Lunchables, and, you guessed it, Heinz ketchup, is breaking up:

  • Last, an important article on what happens to children when they become increasingly acutely malnourished. Recall that FEWS Net and others have declared that many parts of Gaza are now experiencing famine. Incredibly tragic.

And some final random thoughts. The great Italian actress Claudia Cardinale passed away this week. We were inspired to watch her in Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo. Such an insane movie. Even better is to watch the making of it in the documentary, “Burden of Dreams.” Herzog is at his finest when he discusses nature and the jungle…His words resonate on the fragility of our world and humans in it.

Food Bytes: Aug 2024 Edition

FOOD BYTES IS A (ALMOST) MONTHLY BLOG POST OF “NIBBLES” ON ALL THINGS CLIMATE, FOOD, NUTRITION SCIENCE, POLICY, AND CULTURE.

It’s been a while, well, the whole summer, since I have written a Food Bytes blog. This summer was full of guilt-free laziness, ice cream eating, and beach combing. Witness the delicious vanilla Mr. Softee cone. On those sticky, hot, humid dog days of summer in NYC when nothing seems to be going right, this will do me just fine. But ketchup-inspired ice cream? That’s a hard no for me. Oh, but there was plenty of consumption of this on those long summer nights and some earlier “draft”ernoons. Pizza always comes to mind when discussing NYC and food in the same breath. Did you know NYC has gone through 4 evolutions of pizza making? Forgeddaboudit. Call me crazy, but I am still focused on the first evolution, and I’m stickin’ to it.

We saw lots of good music over the summer including DIIV at the beautiful Brooklyn Paramount, Jessica Pratt, OFF! (with the legendary Keith Morris), and Horse Lords in central LA. I also found myself not reading many scientific articles over the summer. Why do that to oneself when days can be spent lollygagging on grassy knolls? Instead,…wait for it…I read books! What a concept. But this week, I did manage to catch up on some light reading, and here are some highlights.

The New York Times has a new series of op-eds, “What to Eat on a Burning Planet.” A real picker-upper on the title alone. David Wallace Wells started the series with an op-ed on how food supplies will change and how climate change threatens the ability to continue to generate the yields needed to feed a growing population. There are a host of other good op-eds worth the read.

The Economist, a British weekly news magazine, hasn’t always given nutrition and food much attention, but lately, they seem to have changed their tune. I am a big fan of the Economist — this idea that you don’t know who the writers are behind the stories, their bravery in calling things as they see them, and, of course, the fantastic writing. They have paid homage to food and nutrition in three great articles.

  • They call for big food to contend with ultra-processed foods. They say, "If pressure from governments ratchets up, the food industry will have to do more than tweak its recipes or roll out new product lines. Companies would have to completely overhaul their manufacturing processes.”

  • They also focused on the idea that small investments in early child nutrition can make the world smarter and that undernutrition across the world persists. This is not new to those working in international nutrition, but it is nice to see broader attention to the topic.

  • At the same time, obesity is rising and seems unstoppable. The Economist argues that drugs (like the GLP-1 class) and taxes won’t be enough. The question is, why don’t we have more solutions that work, and why has no country been able to stop this trend? Don’t say it is willpower, please….

A lot is happening in the ongoing debates of livestock and meat production and consumption — one of the most juggernaut issues in food systems. Here are some highlights:

Source: Herzon et al 2024 Nature Food

  • The Good Food Institute—a nonprofit organization that promotes plant- and cell-based alternatives to animal products, particularly meat, dairy, and eggs—released a report that argues if Americans replaced 50% of their animal consumption (meat and dairy) with plant-based foods, 47.3 million fewer acres of cropland would be needed to grow that plant protein. Let’s see how that goes down with the livestock sector.

  • According to Vox, environmental NGOs help greenwash the livestock industry’s climate impact. They use the example of the World Wildlife Fund and their relationship with McDonalds who are part of a round table on sustainable beef (with WWF accepting millions from McDonalds to assist in the roundtable collaboration. Yikes.

  • More and more studies are better articulating the impacts of red meat consumption on non-communicable disease outcomes. This meta-analysis further confirms that a higher intake of red meat and processed meat increases the risk of type 2 diabetes incidence. A microsimulation model estimated that a 30% reduction in both processed meat and unprocessed red meat intake could lead to 1,073,400 fewer occurrences of type 2 diabetes, 382,400 fewer occurrences of cardiovascular disease, 84,400 fewer occurrences of colorectal cancer, and 62,200 fewer all-cause deaths over a 10-year period among an adult US population.

  • The evidence is building…maybe leading to more statements such as this. The question is, how? These authors suggest downsizing livestock herds and for those that remain in existence, ensuring they are sustainable and present a framework (see figure above) for how sustainable livestock systems fit into a safe operating space.

  • And what we don’t talk about enough is animal and human welfare associated with our unlimited appetite for animal meats. Michael Holtz wrote an illuminating and devastating account about working in a Dodge City meatpacking plant during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. I also highlighted the issue of young immigrant teenagers working in dangerous conditions at slaughterhouses in a past Food Bytes post.

Food prices, cost, and affordability are hot topics these days. Kamala has made minimizing food price gouging part of her future economic plan if she were to become president-elect. Some disagree with her strategy. The FAO’s State of Food Insecurity Report released its latest data on food affordability. While the number has come down this year from 3.1 to 2.83 billion people who cannot afford a healthy diet, it is still shockingly high and inequitable across regions of the world. FAO says: “In 2022, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet dropped below pre-pandemic levels in the group of upper-middle- and high-income countries as a whole, while the group of low-income countries had the highest levels since 2017.” But still, food prices continue to rise, pushing up the cost of a healthy diet year on year. In 2022, costs went up 11% in just one year. A group out of IFPRI suggests that the cost and affordability of healthy diets need more investigation into their accuracy and if assumptions of these metrics skew what is actually affordable. Their analysis argues that the EAT-Lancet diet is not affordable for 2.13 billion people, not the 3.02 originally reported. I am not an economist or a specialist in this topic, so I cannot agree or disagree with these findings. However, I am a scientist, and opening debates and discussions on metrics is a healthy pursuit to get to the truth. In another paper published in Nature Food, authors analyze per capita budget shares for food and an additional 12 raw food categories, including ultra-processed food and beverages, across 94 countries from the period 1990 to 2019. They found that food expenditures are not the same worldwide, and low-income food demand does not necessarily mirror high-income demand. Of course, budget allocations align with income levels, food trade and production, and culture. Check out this figure to see how much it diverges across low to high-income countries.

Source: Liang et al 2024 Nature Food

A few other Bytes: This paper on the climate-food-migration nexus by Megan Carney is a doozy but so important. Hulsen et al. published a paper on how local food environments impact children’s diets. They did this work in Malawi and found significant differences between rural and urban food environments, and that, of course, access to more variety of foods in these markets has positive impacts on children’s diets. The New York Times has highlighted a study on tipping points that may just put the fear of god in you. Die-offs! Collapses! Ghostly coral reefs! Seriously, these are scary outcomes if we do nothing about climate and the science on tipping points has momentum. Speaking of tipping points, has Italy’s marine ecosystem reached one, and the result is blue crab invasions and infestations? In the worst-case scenario, tipping points could lead to massive destruction of precious ecosystems, food insecurity for billions, and, in some cases, famines. The world has witnessed cataclysmic famines in the past. The question remains as to why Gaza and Sudan have not been declared as famine states. NPR explains. Declaring a famine is not so simple…but it doesn’t mean inaction and complacency.

And if you need some recommendations on keeping up with the latest food systems news, if you don’t read and support Civil Eats, do so. If you were a fan of The Counter and were devastated when they closed shop, have no fear. Grist has come to the rescue, and their food reporting is awesome.

And for those of you who tear up every time you hear Gillian Welch’s Time (the Revelator), she and her partner, David Rawlings, have a new album out. It may just help you laze away the last days of summer. Enjoy!