Mediterranean cuisine and health: a multiapproach exploring, the sofrito technique
- Autores: José Fernando Rinaldi Alvarenga
- Directores de la Tesis: Rosa María Lamuela Raventós (dir. tes.), Paola Quifer Rada (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat de Barcelona ( España ) en 2019
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: María Izquierdo Pulido (presid.), Jara Pérez Jiménez (secret.), Daniela Martini (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Alimentación y Nutrición por la Universidad de Barcelona
- Materias:
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- Resumen
Cooking made humans evolve. Cooking modified our gastrointestinal system, reducing the gut size and energy expenditure for digestion, which enabled the appearance of a more energy-dependent brain. Cooking process have emerged as a way to maximize the nutritional benefits from a limited amount of food. During the evolution, different diets appeared, in which culinary techniques and combination of ingredients led to what we know today as dietary patterns, such as Mediterranean Diet. This diet is characterized by a high intake of phytochemicals and recommended as a dietary standard in the prevention of cardiovascular and chronic diseases. However, the health outcomes of Mediterranean Diet are reportedly difficult to reproduce in non-Mediterranean populations, indicating the differences between cultures gastronomic techniques as one of the causes. Mediterranean cuisine was historically an excellent cooking model capable of exploring the healthy potential of different foods. Some traditional Mediterranean cooking process have a positive effect on nutritional quality of food, improving digestibility, retention of phytochemicals and caloric density. However, a scientific approach to how Mediterranean culinary process, the combination of their ingredients and their main dishes could influence bioactive compounds related to health has not yet been explored. The use of science in gastronomy is recent. In the 1980s, the term molecular gastronomy emerged as a discipline to approximate gastronomy and science in order to explain the mechanism and phenomena that occur during a dish preparation and consumption. This discipline is usually focus in physical and chemical process in relation to flavor but leaves aside nutritional aspects. Currently, some studies have characterized how different culinary techniques affect the content of phytochemicals, especially polyphenols and carotenoids, but with a simplistic approach, analyzing only one food and targeted compounds already known in raw food, forgetting the complexity of the dishes we eat and the formation of new chemical products. Therefore, an approximation between gastronomy and health needs to be more realistic, in which food consumption cannot be separated from culinary habits and cultural aspects. The aim of this thesis was study the role of traditional Mediterranean cuisine, especially home-made preparations, could impact the content of bioactive compounds and promote health using the Mediterranean technique of sofrito. For this, different methodological approaches such as factorial designs and “omics” technique were used to describe a simple cooking technique that transforms dishes into complex systems.
