Food Identity and Preserving Cultural Heritage
A panel of chefs and food experts discuss food identity and the intersection of safeguarding cultural heritage and food diversity.
About This Event
Couscous, jollof rice, and pizza not only spark appetites but conjure images of specific places. Food is inextricably linked to culture, tradition, community, and identity. Yet changing consumer attitudes, climate change, and dietary diversity are affecting what and how we eat. How can safeguarding cultural heritage and preserving food diversity strengthen communities and build healthier food systems?
About the Speakers
Co-Chef of Meroma (Mexico City)
Mercedes graduated from the International Culinary Centre in New York City. In 2016, she co-founded the restaurant Meroma in Mexico City, where she is in constant search of sustainable products from a local web of producers and purveyors that accurately represent their environment.
Founder and Principal, Kitchen Sense, LLC
For almost 30 years, Mitchell Davis helped steer the James Beard Foundation to the forefront of food in America. At Kitchen Sense, LLC, a multi-faceted consultancy for food, Davis draws on vast experience and a global network of world-class professionals to evaluate, analyze, research, conceive, create, and solve food-world needs.
Paul Newnham
Director, SDG2 Advocacy Hub Secretariat
Paul heads up the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 Advocacy Hub, an initiative bringing together NGOs, advocacy groups, civil society, the private sector, and UN agencies to coordinate global campaigning and advocacy to achieve SDG2. Paul seeks to generate change that will impact food systems, people, and the planet.
Chef of Épicure (South Africa)
Coco Reinarhz received his formal training at the Ecole Hotelière de la Province de Namur, Belgium. He combines classical French training with the panorama of expressive but previously overlooked African food in a modern way to make a unique contribution to the development of an
unrecognized new world food genre.