Eating Patterns and Food Security in the Mediterranean. The Current Situation and Future Prospects

The Mediterranean diet has enjoyed a high reputation over many years, both for its nutritional quality and its health benefits. What does it consist in, how has it developed and how is it currently evolving? In this article, Martine Padilla demonstrates the main characteristics of this diet and shows how eating patterns are developing in the various regions of the Mediterranean Basin, chiefly as a result of societal changes and modernization. She also analyses the impacts of these changes with regard to food security, both quantitative and qualitative.
Then, basing herself on a foresight exercise on quantitative and qualitative food security in the Mediterranean region to the year 2020, she presents four possible future scenarios. These are: “Food Autism”, “The Market and Modernity at All Costs”, “A Harmonious Combination of the Local and the International,” and “Taking Responsibility for Food: Redistribution and Health”. Lastly, she offers a series of recommendations designed to promote the desired food security, including, most notably, a concerted, all-embracing, consumer-centred policy, respect for traditional produce, and the mobilization of actors at all levels of the supply chain. These are lines of action that can all contribute to the – environmental and cultural – sustainability of the Mediterranean region.