 Pelegrini was a professor in nutrition at the University of Udine and who also holds a position at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands who will talk to us about sustainable food between reality and false myths. Thank you, good morning. Thank you for a kind presentation and for inviting me to this conference. So sustainable food should be part of a sustainable diet. So we start with the official definition of sustainable diets that are diets with a low environmental impact which contributed to food and nutrition security and to healthy life for present and future generations. Sustainable diets are protective, respectful, respectful of biodiversity and ecosystem, culturally acceptable, accessible, economically fair and affordable, nutritionally adequate, safe and healthy while optimizing natural and human resources. So there are three elements in the definition of these diets that are healthy aspects, environmental impact and socio-economical, socio-cultural aspects. So a diet, I need to move because I cannot read, sorry, in the screen. So regarding the healthy aspects, those diets are based on great variety of unprocessed and minimal processed foods, balanced cross food group. The diets include whole grain, legumes, nuts and fruits and vegetables, can also include a moderate amount of eggs, dairy, poultry and fish, a small amount of red meat. Of course, should be consistent with the WHO guidelines to reduce the risk of diet related and non-communicable diseases. Exactly what should be in a sustainable healthy diet was defined in the Eat, Lonset Commission 2019. They defined the global scientific targets for shifting the world toward healthy diets and sustainable food production, with the idea to feed the aspect that 10 billion of the population. The proposition of the commission was that current dietary trends are not feasible to feed the aspect of the growing population. On one hand, the global border of communicable disease is getting worse and worse, and on the other hand, the footprint effect of the current food production is reducing the stability of the earth system. Therefore, a great food transformation is needed. So the commission established the gram per day of each food group, meaning whole grain, vegetable, fruit, tubers and so on, based on the environmental impact of food production, combined with nutrition requirement for children older than two years and adults. So when the reference diet should be absurd, adopted, is expected a reduction of premature mortality and the possibility to avoid about 11.1 million deaths per year in 2030. So according to the commission, this pattern is flexible within a safe operating space, can feed the population, tailor food to the preferences and cultures of different populations. For this reason, is called also the planetary diet, and so since it can be adapted to different culture and different dietary patterns while maintaining the healthness and environmental sustainability. However, we are far from these reference dietary intake, especially in terms of high introduction of red meat, starchy vegetable, eggs, but lower introduction of plant-based foods such as vegetable, fruit, legumes and so on. So based on that comparison, even if the planetary diet is not a vegetarian diet, it's clear that we should move to a more plant-based diet. However, not all the diets, plant-based diets, are equally sustainable. So it is important to define which dietary pattern is sustainable, but also healthy of course, to support consumers in making sustainable choices. So in this study, they studied the environmental, healthy and animal welfare impact of different common plant-based diets, and they found that higher the square, higher the sustainability, that vegan diet is more sustainable in terms of gas emission, land use, but not in terms of water use, even when compared to the omnivores diet. In the case of healthy impact, Mediterranean diet was the best and combining the results from a questionnaire used to measure the probability of adopting a new diet in a group of Australian adults, the Mediterranean diet was shown to have the greatest projected positive impact followed by the vegetarian diet. So based on these results, we can say that a small quantity of animal product would be a good compromise between health and sustainability. That the vegan diet is not as sustainable as expected and not significant, different from the sustainability of the vegetarian diet was emerged also in our study, in which we use the recorded dietary intake of a group of population instead of the the ideal or hypothetical diet that usually are used. We speculate that the effect of that was due to do probably several aspects. One is that in hypothetical vegetarian vegan diets, usually unprocessed plant-based foods replace animal-based foods. However, in the real diet, people use a lot of industrial highly processed plant-based meat and diet substitutes. Moreover, the lower density energy density of plant-based foods results of course in an higher food intake for vegan with respect to the vegetarian, so therefore a higher impact, especially in terms of water consumption. So these considerations allow me to highlight three aspects that are for me central when you find a healthy diet and healthy sustainable diet. The question is, are plant-based foods substitute always more sustainable than animal products? Are plant-based foods substitute as nutritious as animal food they replace and which functional unit should be used to evaluate the environmental impact of food? So I will go over these aspects with you in the next slides. So meat alternatives can be produced using different protein sources, for example gluten, soy, but also insect, microprotein, and so on. In this study, the authors evaluate the life cycle calculated from the griddle to the plate of several meat substitutes compared to a fried chicken that is considered the most environmental friendly meat. As you can see, some lab grown alternative meat produce a lot at a very high impact, but in the case of gluten and other plant-based foods, the difference with the impact of chicken was not as big as expected, probably due to the energy that is consumed during the extraction of protein from their sources. In this study, they calculate the life cycle stages from a cradle to gate, in this case a retail, of two alternative milk and a regular one. They use two functional units. One was the liter of milk and the results are reported, so more or less in all the aspects that regular milk perform the worst except in case of global warming and in case of water intake. But when we considered the kilogram of protein in the milk that they provide, the picture changed completely. In this case, the animal milk performed the worst with respect to other milks. So why use these units? Because milk is of course a source of protein in our diet, so it is important that milk substitutes provide at least the same nutrients than the food they replaced. This brings to the second question. Unfortunately, the reply is no. This is clear when we have a look at the title of this study. The authors propose that it is time to define the nutrient standards for these baby ages, plant-based baby ages, because they in general their nutrition quality is very low. So they focus especially on a quantity of protein, quality of protein, and also they suggest that a serving of this milk should contain at least the 50% of nutrient requirement, daily nutrient requirement of at least calcium vitamin D, vitamin B12. They analyze also commercial plant-based baby ages present in the USDA database and following their standard, nutrient standard, they just this large amount of baby ages in only 5% of them met the nutrient standard. So based on what I already said, the critical point in defining sustainable food is for sure the functional unit. You can have a different approach, for example in case of milk protein, kilo or quantity of protein, or as it launched commission use a serving of food and they in fact evaluated the environmental effect of each food group based on the serving of food. However, we don't eat all food in the same quantity and the same frequency especially this should be clear, considered for example this graphic representation of a sustainable Mediterranean diet. Of course, cereals, vegetables, fruit are consumed in large portion every meal, that should be consumed at least in large portion every meal. This being a large quantity of these foods. On the contrary, animal protein sources should be consumed in smaller portion on the weekly basis. So bring to a smaller quantity and therefore a smaller impact than when we calculated on the basis of, for example, kilo or liter of food. So there are several aspects that could be considered when we try to define a sustainable food and a sustainable diet. For example, a colleague in Milan defined an Italian Mediterranean dietary pattern based on the Eat, Loneset, Reference diet and also they evaluated a carbon footprint changes when in that diet gradually we substitute food with other food. In this case, in this graph, for example, fresh food with frozen vegetables, local fruit with important, imported fruits or seasonal vegetables with greenhouse grown vegetables. As you can see, the way the food is produced, the vegetables is produced has a big impact on the diet. So how to conclude this difficult and complex topic, I would say that it is tricky to push consumer toward a more plant-based diet without accepting the fact that they will continue to consume more convenient and ready to eat plant-based foods. So we need to find a way to reduce the environmental impact of these foods, but on the other hand, these foods should be made healthier. For example, for to find them with vitamin B12 that present only in animal sources, that of course needs to be extract or synthesized. So using additional resources. So that could generate further doubt of the sustainability. So the path toward a sustainable diet is still long and unfortunately full of challenges. And thank you for the attention. Thanks a lot, Nicoletta. We have time for questions. One from the floor. Thank you very much for wonderful presentation. I'm not inspired in this and therefore I wonder, I want to ask you, a lot of vegans eat raw food and what is the bioavailability of all these micronutrients from raw food when compared to cooked food? Could you please answer if they also lack all these micronutrients? Thank you for the question. In terms of soluble vitamin, it's better of course to eat raw food, but the digestibility and the bioavailability, for example, of proteins or liposoluble compounds is lower when you consume the raw foods, so then the cooked food. So in general, of course, in general depends on the type of cooking methods and so on. But not always, I would say that not always the raw food are better than cooked foods. Exactly. But therefore I needed your opinion for that. And also regarding meat-based and fish-based products, do you think it's more healthy to eat raw like sashimi than cooked fish? For example, even if light cooked, then you have more bioavailability of proteins or it's also the same as vegetarian food. Vegetarian food? Yes, it's a complex question. For me, vegetarian depends on the food, so it's complicated because every food has its own cooking method, of course, different cooking methods, but the best in terms of to increase the bioavailability and so on. For example, we say that cooked meat usually release more proteins, but sometimes if the temperature is too high, for example, when you roast there or so on, you produce cross-linking between the proteins and this reduces the digestibility. And also my question was when you cook meat or fish, then you aggregate the proteins and then for enzymes to cleave them, exactly. That was my point. So do we reduce bioavailability or not so much if it's light cooking, for example? Light cooking in this case is better than raw. Okay, thank you. We have to connect with the Philippines, so I think we'll leave the questions for after. I just have a quick one for you. In terms of the adherence to the eat lancet diet, one of the most striking things is that, especially in Europe and North America, we're eating too much meat. What are the greatest obstacles to changing that situation? Are these consumer habits or are these resistances from the animal farming system or is it both? Both, probably. It was both. I would say both. And the study I presented was related to also which diet could be adopted. And of course, it's not a vegan diet because it's too extreme for omnivores people, but probably Mediterranean or a diet in which you could reduce the quantity of meat could be a good option. Thank you. We'll have time for questions at the end of the next presentation also for Nicoleta, who will be here. And our next speaker is...