GOOD food, BETTER health

Project summary

Modern times are radically changing our eating habits. Commitments of study and work lead us to spend more and more time away from home with quick meals at lunch time, meals that are often pre-packaged and rich in saturated fats, simple sugars and animal proteins. The problem is widespread among the young generations more and more attracted by import food patterns and conditioned by technology and advertising. The cost in terms of health is very high. In Europe 1 person out of 6 is oversized (Eurostat 2016) and even people with normal weight have bad food habits, with some alarming consequences like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes or even some forms of cancer. The changed eating habits may cause also a progressive loss of gastronomic traditions and typical local recipes that characterize the common heritage of European gastronomy. The protection of European gastronomic culture, the authenticity of the products and their quality schemes together with an increasing attention to sustainability are linked to the need to limit the phenomenon of food waste and these factors are compulsory to invest on in order to guarantee safe and healthy food to future generations. The project "GOOD food, BETTER health" aims, therefore, at building a European partnership between schools of catering and hotel management from Italy, Poland, Portugal and Czech Republic to enhance the development of virtuous processes of exchanging and comparing different culinary traditions and gastronomic experiences with eyes wide open on food waste related problems. The project starts from the main teaching of the first and most important Medical Institution , the Ancient Medical School in Salerno, whose motto "Let food be thy medicine" (Hippocrates) is the partnership's guideline. The project intends to establish an exchange oriented partnership towards the pursuit of the following objectives: - Strengthening the capacity of schools to become bearers of healthy and balanced food models; - Enhancing the common heritage of European gastronomy, the variety and the quality of agricultural and agro-food products in Europe; - Supporting the use of sustainable approaches in the kitchen aimed at reducing food waste; -Promoting the union of the various gastronomic traditions and the mutual transmission of knowledge. The achievement of these objectives also passes through the reinforcement of the skills and knowledge of the school staff that will be involved directly and indirectly in the project activities. On the other side, the project and the planned activities will ensure the achievement of objectives related to the professional and personal development of students and, specifically to the strengthening of the competences and personal, civic, social, linguistic and digital, and professional knowledge. In the course of the project 4 mobility activities will be realized in every partners' schools with the aim of promoting the exchange and collaboration among students on the treated issues. Each activity will involve 8 students and 2 accompanying teachers per school. The activities carried out during the mobilities will represent the core of the entire project. The activities will allow the realization of some tangible results which will be widely shared inside and outside the partnership (eTwinning and School Education Gateway will be used as well): - Researches on the main factors underlying food choices and food waste will be carried out, together with the analysis of the surveys performed in each partner school; - Presentations of local products and traditional recipes of all the schools involved; - Realization of 3 multimedia works concerning the agricultural products and their division into groups of colors associated with the nutritional features (1); products with PDO, PGI and TSG (2); good practices of reuse of waste in kitchen (3); - Realization of a recipe book for the valorization of local products and the gastronomic traditions belonging to the four partner schools.