He appeals to “educate the citizen” so that when a young person goes shopping he does not keep “the donut and the sweets”
SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 28 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The president of the Spanish Society of Community Nutrition and specialist in Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Javier Aranceta, admits that the feeding of children and young people is still a “pending subject” and therefore advocates the planning and establishment of the ‘weekly menu ‘ in the homes.
In an interview granted to Europa Press on the occasion of his participation these days in the Canary Islands in the conference ‘A challenge shared at home’ organized by Hecansa and Hiperdino in Tenerife and Gran Canaria, he has demanded more family involvement and that everyone, adults and minors do shared work.
Thus, he details that the “collaboration” of the family unit is important and that tasks such as setting the table, buying bread or cutting fruit and working on “taste education” are distributed, for which he recommends that young people also go to the market and choose the products. “Feeling involved is very profitable for everything to be accepted,” she says.
The theoretical-practical workshop is held this Thursday at the Hotel Escuela in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and on Friday at the Hecansa offices in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and aims to raise awareness about healthy eating and educate on eating habits.
Along these lines, he points out that “citizens must be educated” and explain “why” some foods must be limited or others promoted. “It is not to bother you, they are elements that have an impact and we give you recommendations for current and future benefit,” she added.
In fact, he comments, when that young person is 16 years old “he will have autonomy and will buy on his own” and it is about not buying “the donut and the sweets” and that he demands in his daily life the salad and the fish “fruit of the education you have received.
The sessions have about 80 registered and Aranceta is considering “tightening the nuts” also with the idea of ”preconception dietary advice” that implies having “health care” and good eating habits months before conception because genetics “is not definitive “and environmental factors influence.
Aranceta assimilates the process to that of a “staff of a piece of music”, which would be genetics, and the other, interpretation, environmental factors, which “if they are negative they can cause problems for the score, which can be good or It doesn’t make for nice music.”
“We are what we eat, it’s not a miracle, all part of the energy and nutrients, the hair, the eyes, the organs, it’s like making a house out of clay or a good material,” he explains, and in that sense, points out that alcohol, tobacco or drugs influence the final result.
“Everything must be monitored so that parents can improve all potential,” he says.
SCHOOLS CANNOT BE “BLAMED FOR EVERYTHING”
It even goes further and points out that the next step will be “precision nutrition”, which will end up being “everyday” to the point that there will be nutrigenomic foods in supermarkets whose consumption will be linked to certain genetic groups.
Along these lines, he states that there may be foods “that are not well metabolized” in an organism or nutrients that a person “needs in greater quantity than others” because, for example, there are people who need more than three pieces of fruit a day and not doing so produces “a silent functional deficit”.
The second part of the day will be a practical workshop, together with the Hecansa gastronome, Vanesa Santana, where a school menu will be presented so that the students can discuss it and then complement it with the meals they make at home and with the help of a healthy pyramid.
Aranceta highlights the value of food in educational centers because it represents five days a week but believes that they cannot be “blamed for everything” either, although she advocates giving “little tricks” so that more vegetables are consumed, for example , and put an end to purees that taste like “prairie green”.
All in all, he is a faithful defender of “the Mediterranean and grandmother’s diet” because “it is culture, health and a traditional value”, recalling the good distribution of the old “single dish” because they were “very complete”, perhaps because it was there was at that time, without nutritional deficiencies.
“Old clothes, for example, if they designed it now, I would give it an award,” he says.
