The Mediterranean diet is priceless heritage of our country, for this reason it must be safeguarded and spread all over the world.

 

 

Last October 26 was held in Castelnuovo Cilento a meeting sponsored by the Professional Institute for hotel services and catering "Ancels Keys" in collaboration with Associazione Anni Lucenti, under the patronage of local authorities on "Food, art and culture" of Cilento: innovative and sustainable tourism as a leverage to grow in Italy and abroad. As clearly expressed by the title of the meeting and taking account of the location where it took place, the focus was on the Mediterranean diet, and its products of Cilento and their value, even as tools of economic growth in Italy and abroad. The invitation to the Centro Studi Italia Canada should be read in this sense. 

 

After the opening by Maria Tersa Scianni, President of the Associazione Anni Lucenti, the moderator Marco Tortora of the Associazione Fair, introduced the various speakers who in front of an audience crowded with students of the last year of the Institute and many entrepreneurs from the agro-industrial and tourism sector have told their business stories. Invited on stage, the Director of CSIC, Mr. Paolo Quattrocchi, has carried out an intervention on the growing importance that is given in Canada to healthy eating and in particular to Italian foods and even more specifically to the Mediterranean diet considered a real way of life, not entirely widespread but able to attract the attention of an increasingly large audience and specialized press. The Director of the Centro Studi Italia-Canada and Vice President of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Canada - Vancouver has, therefore, reiterated the importance that CETA also has to the export of high-quality food products that may encounter difficulties due to the not always relevant quantities produced compared to the demand, however, retain their value and uniqueness also as representatives of the communities from which they come. It is precisely the value of the "community" and its typicality that can constitute a meeting point, attraction, and interest between Cilento and Canadian reality. The intervention ended with the hope that the young students can look to Canada as a destination for the development and completion of their professional studies, underlining the hope that Mediterranean Diet, Cilento, and Canada will soon be able to meet effectively as the Institute Ancel Keys already did in other countries: after all the same Provincial Government of British Columbia is attentive to the Mediterranean diet, to which it has devoted a large space in the HealthLink BC section of the official website of the Government of British Columbia. On the relationship between tradition, culture, and territory, the intervention of Gianluca Russo, leader of the "Maurizio Russo" company, which has been combined for four generations tradition and innovation, with the constant search for declining the ancients into new flavors respecting taste and cultural innovations.

 

"The value of traditional products is not only given by the product itself, but the experience and the community around that product exists and has been maintained and that precisely because of the relationship with the territory gives the product a unique, additional and different "flavor."

 

This is a summary of the Gianluca Russo's intervention. Other important interventions were those of Valerio Calabrese, director of the Museum of the Mediterranean Diet as well as member of the Legambiente Regional Council, who reiterated the value of the Mediterranean diet and the values transmitted by the Eco-museum and Giuseppe Rivello of the Cooperative "Terra di Resilienza" who talked about how the Cooperative was born and the intense activity of study carried out on different types of local wheat brought back to life and disseminated again in the local community as an instrument of identification and renewal of tradition.

The meeting ended with a lively debate on the role of professional schools as traditionally perceived in Italy: to them, sometimes, there is a tendency to give a different and reductive meaning compared to the paths considered most prestigious. Actually, if structured and managed by guaranteeing high-quality standards, professional institutes allow students to undertake a specialized training path while ensuring a high level of general preparation. This, moreover, is the perception that North America has concerning the school system and that is well combined with our professional institutes.
This debate saw the participation of Mariangela Santarcangelo, Maria Masella and Simone Cavari, respectively school Principals of the Liceo Tasso of Salerno, of the IIS Ancel Keys and of the Gobetti-Volta of Florence.

 

Ancel Keys, American physician and physiologist, is considered the founder of the Mediterranean diet. He spent most of his life studying the lifestyle of Mediterranean countries and pointed out that "Eat well to stay well" (feeling well starts with eating well). The Professional Institute for Hotel and Catering Services (IPSAR) of Castelnuovo Cilento, which mainly focuses on cooking, has chosen to name the school to this great scientist who, thanks to his studies, has revolutionized the way of conceiving food and cooking, as a method of healthiness.