Super Food Forever Showcases the Astounding Diversity of Peruvian Foods

The Casa Peru located at the Lima Convention Center will gather a group of innovative actors promoting Peruvian superfoods

• Nutrition is a key component in promoting the development and competitiveness of athletes. Peru’s array of food diversity holds important nutritional potential yet is underutilized both locally and globally.
• The Peruvian Government estimates that currently 43% of children suffer from malnutrition in Peru and more than 37% of adults are obese (ENDES, 2018).
• Scientists and researchers have demonstrated that conserving and using the biodiversity of our foods is one key solution in enhancing the nutritional value of our foods and ensuring access to better diets
• The Super Food Forever event seeks to showcase the wealth of Peruvian food diversity and the potential of some of these “superfoods” to improve nutrition and support future generations of sports champions. It will convene different actors across sectors, including Government, private sector, chefs, research institutions and civil society, to look at how they are including more superfoods in their value chains and, as a result, contributing to reducing hunger and malnutrition.

Lima, 30 July 2019. – Super Food Forever, an event which will take place in the Casa Peru at the Media Center of the Pan American Games (Lima Convention Center) on 6 August, will celebrate Peru’s wealth of food diversity and explore its importance for improving nutrition and promoting development in sports.

In the context of the 2019 Lima Pan American Games, the second largest sporting event in the world, Super Food Forever will gather innovative actors working in the fields of agriculture, food systems and sports to showcase how they are utilizing superfoods to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger and in the process, shaping the future generation of Peruvian athletes.

The event will be a combination of short expert presentations and tastings, showing participants easy, delicious ways to use superfoods in their diets. Renowned Peruvian chef, Palmiro Ocampo, founder and leader of Ccori Cocina Optima, is the genius behind the menu, which will consist on five plates – based on a professional nutritionist’s diet recommendation, tailor-made for athletes. In between tastings, presentations will highlight the short and long-term challenges our food systems face and point to ongoing nutrition projects aimed at providing solutions.

Super Food Forever will provide a platform for stakeholders to find common ground and jointly develop a national strategy for ensuring greater food security and thereby protecting the future of sports.

Participants will learn more about current challenges to global productivity and food security, and how superfoods can help address them. In particular, talks will focus on the current status of nutrition in Peru, the properties of superfoods, the products that are being developed around them, and how superfoods can drive greater competitiveness and innovation in the market.

“At Ccori Cocina Optima, we pride ourselves on social gastronomic research and introducing our guests to a variety of lesser-known ingredients from Peru,”says Ocampo. “While foods like camu camu and native potatoes have been beloved in Peruvian kitchens for millennia , the power of these foods for the global food system has often been overlooked. Peru’s diverse ingredients are not only delicious but critical to enhancing nutrition, strengthening farmer’s livelihoods and helping them to produce food that can withstand the increasing challenges wrought by climate change. Super Food Forever offers a unique opportunity to partner with the influential sports world – superstars in the health and fitness arena – to put these ingredients back in the spotlight and show that the future of food can be surprising, nutritious, sustainable, and best of all, delicious.”

This event is one in a global series of events organised by the Food Forever Initiative, aimed at highlighting the importance and urgency of conserving and using the vast diversity of our foods. Previous events were held in New York City, Chicago, Stockholm, San Jose, Bonn, an even Cusco on May 2019, where in a notable moment, President Martin Vizcarra signed a Declaration of Interdependence advocating for greater protection of crop and livestock diversity for ensuring more sustainable and resilient food systems.

The event is jointly organized by Food Forever in partnership with the Peruvian National Promotion Agency – Promperu, the National Society of Fisheries (SNP), Ccori Cocina Optima, among others. The Food Forever initiative is a global campaign which seeks to promote the conservation and sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity.

Super Food Forever is a closed event for the accredited people in the Pan American Games Media Center. Please contact Rodrigo Barrios if you are interested in arranging interviews. You can follow the event using the hashtag #LetsPlantTheSeed. Follow @FoodForever2020

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Key Messages

• Lima is the host of the 2019 Pan American Games, the largest sports event ever organized in the country, and the second largest sports event in the world after the Summer Olympics. Lima is also a city suffering from critical problems around nutrition, namely more than 170 thousand children below the age of three suffering from anemia (or 35% of the urban child population) and almost 5 million people affected by obesity (roughly 40% of the metropolitan population. This significantly hinders the city’s chances of ensuring competitive and healthy athletes in the future.
• Peru is one of the few megadiverse countries in the world. It is also one of the most important places globally when it comes to conservation of biodiversity, not only because it is the cradle of the potato, the world’s fourth most important food crop, but also because of its astounding wealth of diverse superfoods, many of them native or endemic. Grains like cañihua and kiwicha (amaranth) and pulses like the Andean lupin (tarwi) are high in protein content and are an ideal ingredient for sports-oriented supplements and nutritional products. Amazonic and Andean fruits like camu camu and aguaymanto (golden berries) are powerful antioxidants, while native fish like anchoveta are rich in minerals and vitamins which help prevent anemia.
• Globally, only 4 crops (maize, wheat, potatoes and rice) account for more than 60% of our calorie intake, while only 12 crops and five animal species account for more than 80%. Increasing more diversity in diets is key to improve the resiliency of food systems, improve nutrition and promote the greater development of athletes. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) both highlight food and nutrition as the main ecosystem service provided by biodiversity.

About Food Forever

Food Forever is a global campaign to raise awareness of the fundamental importance of safeguarding the diversity of crops, and domesticated animal species, to guarantee food and nutrition security, and address climate change. The campaign is part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals agenda, pertaining particularly to goal 2.5, which states that the task of conserving and promoting the sustainable use of and equitable access to agrobiodiversity should be realised by 2020. Given the sense of urgency, Food Forever seeks to bring together all the different actors, whether they be politicians, farmers, chefs, entrepreneurs or activists, in a unique concentrated effort to ensure the availability of our food supply forever.

About Ccori Cocina Optima

Ccori is a Peruvian NGO promoting the optimization of food consumption in a sustainable way. Their main objective is to transform Peru in a territory where the gastronomic wealth is optimally used both socially as well as environmentally. To that end, they work around three guiding pillars: (i) reduce malnutrition and anemia, promoting the rescue of nutritional value within foods, (ii) eradicate food waste, and (iii) promote the more active involvement of women in food systems.

Press contact:
Rodrigo Barrios
[email protected]
+49 (0) 171 184 7454

Cierra Martin
[email protected]
+49 (0) 171 116 5036