Prof. Lluis Serra-Majem

The Mediterranean Diet as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (UNESCO): the role of fermented drinks.

The Mediterranean Diet is an enormous cultural heritage accumulated during millennia and passed down uninterruptedly from generation to generation. It has been evolving, welcoming and wisely incorporating new food items and techniques thanks to its strategic geographical position and its capacity of miscegenation and exchange of the Mediterranean populations. The Mediterranean Diet has been, and still is, an evolutionary, dynamic and vital cultural heritage.

It is essential to inform, educate and promote the Mediterranean Diet to the society to avoid the dilapidation of this heritage. Descent into oblivion would have disastrous consequences for our health, our agriculture, our traditional countryside and would provoke a progressive abandonment of many cultivations with the consequent exodus of the rural population to cities. Olive oil, wheat and fermented beverages such as wine and beer play a major role on this diet, together with fruit and vegetables, beans, nuts, dairy and fish.

It is obvious that this is an enormous task that involves assigning considerable resources that not all Mediterranean countries are in conditions to assume. Only the international recognition such as the UNESCO including the Mediterranean Diet on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity will achieve the mobilization needed to safeguard this enormous and millenniumold heritage.

Short biography

Lluís Serra-Majem is a medical doctor with a Ph.D. specialising in Preventive Medicine and Public Health.

In the early stages of his professional career as a medical epidemiologist, he oversaw various activities within the Catalan Ministry of Health, which he left to undertake Masters and Doctoral degrees in Nutrition at the University of Sherbrooke (Canada). Upon his return in 1988, he became Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Barcelona, where he founded and is the Director of the Community Nutrition Research Centre of the University of Barcelona Science Park.

In 1995 he became Full Professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where he also holds the UNESCO Chair for Research, Planning and Development of Local Health Systems.

In 1989 he founded the Spanish Society of Community Nutrition, of which he served as President from 2000 to 2006, and also created in 1994 the Spanish Journal of Community Nutrition. He is President and founder of the NGO Nutrition without Borders (2005), and also serves as President of the Mediterranean Diet Foundation (since 1996) as well as the Nutrition Research Foundation (since 1997). Recently he has been honoured with the presidency of the Spanish Academy of Nutrition and Food Sciences (2009).

He has a leading role both nationally and internationally in the field of public health nutrition as well as the Mediterranean Diet, and organised and served as President of the First World Congress of Public Health Nutrition in September 2006. Recently he took a leadership role in promoting the recognition by the UNESCO of the Mediterranean Diet as Intangible Cultural Heritage of The Humanity.

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Insufficient evidence for the beer belly

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28/10/2011 > Press release

Press release from the Federation of European Nutrition Societies: Moderate consumption of beer could be beneficial to cardiovascular and bone health

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26/10/2011 > News

Short video of 6th Beer and Health Symposium now available

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