Amèlia Sarroca, Research Support Technician
The Mediterranean Diet is considered one of the healthiest thanks to its contribution of essential nutrients, proteins of plant origin, and low content of saturated fats and salt. At CREDA, we are working on an ambitious project with the aim of improving adherence to the Mediterranean diet of the whole family: SWITCHtoHEALTHY.
But even though we live in a Mediterranean country, our adherence to this healthy and sustainable model remains to be seen… that’s why you should be attentive to the SWITCHtoHEALTHY project.
For cold weather, hot meals
Especially when the cold comes, we tend to make foods more forceful, with the misunderstanding that a more caloric meal will help us pass the cold. It’s not like that. We need to eat hot, leather asks us, but that doesn’t mean raising the fat and meat content in our diet.
The Christmas soup, contains a rich variety of vegetables, with cabbages as a great representative of the brasics, which provide us with fibre, vitamin C and high anti-cancer components (glucosinolates), carrot, celery… well crushed with chickpeas and virgin olive oil, it’s a good Christmas dish of vegetable origin, with a good content of protein and iron that would only need to be accompanied by citrus for dessert or a salad of raw green leaf, to absorb well the iron of the legume (not only lentils have).
Let’s control the calories we eat
If we do not carry out a sedentary life, we should consume more calories in winter, since we spend more on regulating body temperature (homeostasis), but in the case of sitting and sitting in a heated office, we do not have more consumption or need more calories in the diet.
The important thing is to guarantee the nutrients that we need and that brings us the season. Green leafy vegetables like chard, spinach, the arugula we find all year round, provide us with minerals, fibre and vitamins.
Learn more about the brassica family
And the queens of winter, the brasics, so varied and of which continuous research is done to recover traditional varieties. Cabbages (Christmas, Easter, Brussels, white, Lombard, kale…), cauliflowers of all colours, bimi, Romanesque (the perfection of nature with its fractals!). You will never finish the recipes, there are many creative ones with both known and unknown varieties.
Do you know the sprout cabbages? The companions and companions of the Miquel Agustí Foundation helped to recover them, a brasic typical of Garraf, which makes the delights of those who remember their childhood taste. Do not hesitate to try them if you go one day in the area.
Of course, let’s always try to bet on local products!
In the meadows of Mareseme and Baix Llobregat, we began to see the plants of beans and peas, fresh legumes very rough in fibre and protein, very ingrained in the Catalan culture.
Let’s not forget the artichoke! At the best time of the season, we will find them very hard, hairless, more usable and with an incredible diversity of cooking. We can find it until May, but it’s in the cold months when it’s hottest. Try to buy the one of Catalonia origin, and if you are lucky to find the traditional White variety of Tudela, you will support the farmers of the area that still seek to save a variety that many years ago is grown in the Baix Llobregat and in the Terres de l’Ebre. Artichokes help clean the body, digest fats (therefore, control cholesterol) and have low caloric content and diuretic properties.
So, 4 winter tips: (1) brasic in all shapes and colours, (2) citrus and raw green leafy vegetables to bring vitamin C, (3) legumes at least 4 meals each week, to help the body and the planet, and (4) hard, flavourful artichokes, which will help you deflate.
Cheers, and good winter,
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