A MFI in the EXPO Milan: insights about it

Expo Milan has been the occasion to point the attention at more larger scale to our food systems and the importance of their sustainability to decrease hungry, pollution and waste. Expo Milan carried then important values that common citizens and not only politics must know to understand the need of a drastic change in our way of buying and consuming food. The participation of many country (148 to be précised) helped in this sense, however, getting in touch with the visitors make me realize that a high number of them confused Expo with a normal gastronomic event. The truth is that not only visitors are guilty because certain countries preferred to focus their attention mainly on their tourism like in an agency where you can buy a flight ticket, instead of explain how sustainability was achieved or where it need to improve.

Nevertheless, for me has been a very important experience because as a Food Identity member I could work strictly in contact with a typical and traditional product from Italy: the Extra Virgin Olive (EVO) Oil. Indeed my job during 6 months has been to promote the Italian EVO oil in Expo. The most valuable part of this job for me was when the client discovered the importance of choosing EVO oil by knowing a lot of information about it such as the name of varieties used, the way they have been processed and their nutritional values. This is not common when you purchase a bottle of EVO oil at the supermarket.

Thanks to this opportunity I could also explain to our customers how it is important to pay attention of what we eat and who we should support when buying a product. It gave me also the opportunity to highlight the significant effort that certain little business put to still on the market and the importance to support them to strength local realities.