Ar

Food for Thought

Food is fundamental to all life. Animals make surprising efforts to eat enough, just to survive a little longer. Locusts form great swarms devouring everything in their path, ants cultivate large farms of fungus, lions form packs to hunt their prey, while humans have fought wars, built farms and invented supermarkets - all to ensure the survival of our own. Without doubt, we eat to live.

Yet where food is abundant, it becomes more than a mere necessity. We turn to oysters for aphrodisiacs, and to garlic for healing. Food influences our biology and drives our behaviour, often in surprising and complex ways. Food is not just the nutrients it contains, but colour and smell, touch and taste. Food is what brings us together - at a family dinner, a barbecue with friends, or a romantic date. We spend much of our time wondering what to eat, how to eat, where to eat, with whom to eat, placing food at the centre of our lives, biology, and society. It seems that more and more, we actually live to eat.

Join us on June 21st at 21:45, as we explore how animals, like us, are driven by their need for food. How appetite affects our brain and shapes the way we perceive the world. And how our needs, as well as our perceptions, determine how we act. Carlos Ribeiro will show us how to find the genes involved in the decision: bifana or pastel de nata?. Steve Simpson will then take us on a journey from cannibal locusts to new insights into human appetite, obesity and the relationship between food and ageing. Finally, from his own journey between culinary worlds, Lisbon chef Paulo Morais will share his passion for creating taste.

Veronica Corrales is a Biological Engineer from Medellín, Colombia. After studying the tiny organisms
that ferment coffee, she joined the MIT Portugal PhD Program. Atracted by the complexity of neuroscience,
Veronica studies how fruit flies assign value to different foods at the Behavior and Metabolism Lab.

Florian Dehmelt comes from Darmstadt, Germany. He studied physics and biology in Munich and Paris
before being seduced by neuroscience. Florian is doing his PhD at the Theoretical Neuroscience
Lab looking at how neurons feed on blood to get energy and how homeostasis is maintained.

We are pleased to announce that we will show the Portugal quarter-finals match at 19h30, and begin the Ar event immediately after the game (21h45). Both the match and Food for Thought will happen in the same place, the auditorium of the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Seat reservations have sold out. People with reservations MUST arrive between 19:00 and 21:40 on the evening of the event.  After that, tickets will be given for people without reservations on the event evening on a first come, first served basis. In our past two events, everyone that came without a reservation was let in.

Live streaming of the event will be available. For more information see here.