The act of eating has both external and internal impacts, reminding us of how complex our relationship with food can be. When we eat, we are giving information to our bodies, which affects our body chemistry, our moods, and our health in general. The food we choose to purchase and consume tells a lot about who we are and how we position ourselves in the society. Food choices could be influenced by social/environmental ethics, religion, health constraints, financial status and convenience to mention but a few.

There are endless opportunities to navigating the complexity and interconnectedness of food . The most exciting work in this new field is led by Matthew Lange, a highly esteemed researcher from UC Davis who has coined the term Internet of Food. As a Food and Health informatician Lange explores how different ontologies interact across the environment–agriculture-food and health, a line of research with numerous valuable insights for rethinking food systems and creating new synergies in these domain, for example in the emerging field of nutrigenomics,, or studying nutrient-gene interaction.

 “The internet of Food is an evolving, global knowledge base,  that exists as ontologies and linked object data stores (LOD)”.  Soon enough, anyone can contribute to this knowledge base through the Internet, and share their own view of food and its complexity, and seek answers to their own questions. For this to happen, Dr. Lange works with subject matter experts to create ontologies as shared conceptualization within different food domains. Matthew Lange is also an advisory board member of the Future Food Institute and has taught in the first two editions of the Food Innovation program and the Food Innovation summer school in Sicily together with his colleague and spouse Daniela Barile. We are delighted to have them both teaching the third cohort of the Food Innovation program. Dr. Matthew Lange will be our guest speaker for the Food is a conversation series at Le Scuderie on the 15^th of March. You don’t want to miss this great opportunity.