Promoting the advance of nutritional science, research and development through global cooperation, getting a good communication and collaboration between scientists devoted to nutrition and spreading information about nutrition sciences through communication technology, particularly in Latin American countries and the Mediterranean basin, are the main objectives of the 20th World Conference of the International Union of Nutritional Societies (IUNS) that will be held in Granada in 2013, becoming the first Spanish city that hosts this meeting, which has already been held in cities like Basel, Amsterdam, Paris, Edinburgh, Washington, Prague and Kyoto.
But these are not the only objectives of the conference. Under the title “Joining cultures through Nutrition”, the symposium will also become a discussion forum for the creation of a high-impact scientific journal in Spanish. According to the professor of the Universidad de Granada in charge of presenting the candidature of the city against the proposals of Argentina, Chile, China and México, Ángel Gil Hernández, the intention of this meeting, which will be held in Spain for the first time, is to become the best scene “to join all the research works which are being developed in Latin America and to configure an important scientific organism of expression in Spanish permanently in order to confer to the Spanish nutritional studies their real importance in the international ambit ”.
“Joining cultures through nutrition”, which will take place between the 15th and the 21st of November of 2013 in the Congress Hall of Granada, will be made up by 8 big symposiums in which the experts will deal with subjects from the role of nutrition in complex diseases or the impact of technology in nutritional qualities to aspects of alimentary security and studies of basic science. These eight parallel symposiums will group 60 more symposiums in which they will deal with some other aspects.
Besides these central activities, the conference will have two Focus Simposium on the specific problems of the Mediterranean basin and Latin America, including for the first time regional aspects in a meeting of these characteristics, and one day of pre-conference devoted to “satellite” symposiums with the participation of international organisms of the stature of the FAO, the UNESCO, the University of the United Nations, the WHO and Nutrition Foundation.
In order to prepare and discuss the fields and subjects that will be discussed in Granada in the next years, different annual conferences will be held in different points of Latin America. In 2006 there will be two, one in São Paulo and another one Quique (Chile), in 2008 it will e celebrated in Cancún, the hosen city, in 2009 it will be in Santiago de Chile and in 2010 in Asunción.
Granada, a bridge between cultures
The Spanish candidature to the World Conference of the International Union of Nutrition Societies has presented a scientific program of excellence proposing Granada as quarter of the Conference for its historical and cultural roots, for the tradition of its University, especially in the Field of Health Sciences and particularly in the teaching of Nutrition, and for its landscape and monumental attractiveness. On the other hand, the Spanish proposal has stressed the city as a bridge of the Mediterranean culture between Europe and America.
According to the president of the scientific committee of the twentieth Conference of the IUNS, the election of Granada is an important international recognition to the work carried out by the Spanish Nutrition Society as well as the teaching and research work of numerous professors connected with Nutrition Sciences in the Universidad de Granada, pioneer in the teaching of this subject in Spain.
b>Reference
Prof Ángel Gil Hernández. Institute for Nutrition and Food Technology
Phone number. 958 248 322 / 958 244174.
E- mail: agil@ugr.es
