On June 23, the Psychology department of the School of Biomedical and Health Sciences at the Universidad Europea held a practical and participatory workshop at the Villaviciosa de Odón Campus, sponsored by Sodexo, on eating disorders and treating obesity. The event was attended by Ana Giménez Maroto, Vice Dean of the School of Biomedical and Health Sciences, Jorge Cuellar, a former Master Chef contestant, Adrián Rodríguez, nutritionist at Sodexo and María Ascensión Blanco, director of the Master’s Degree in Eating Disorders and Obesity.
According to the World Health Organization, WHO, Spain heads the table in child obesity in Europe, something that María Ascensión Blanco considers to be “a pandemic that we much address with a healthy diet”. For Adrián Rodríguez, a nutritionist at Sodexo, “we must defend the Mediterranean diet as a lifestyle, a key so that good eating affects our health”.
Jorge Cuellar discussed the most significant gastronomy movements in recent years such as “Market cooking”, “Slow Food”, “vegetable and gastro-botanical cooking” or “Fusion cuisine”; he also highlighted the need for these movements to include key nutrients in all recipes. Cuellar offered a molecular perspective of nutrition and warned that nutrients are sometimes altered by or lost during cooking processes, championing steaming to defend the vitamins and minerals that would otherwise be lost in slower cooking processes.
At the end of the session, the contestant of the 2nd edition of Master Chef, along with his colleagues Miguel Ángel Martínez and Cristina Romero offered a show cooking display where they showed those present how to prepare healthy dishes that help prevent excess weight and obesity.