Do you know what you eat? Key Q Project
We don't sit at the table to eat, but to eat together. Plutarco
The conscious consumerism During each meal, we make some choices that are crucial for our wellbeing and for the future of our planet. Throughout food we improve and we preserve the person's and the community's life quality.
Do you know what you eat? • Appreciating the variety and the quality of the food from a territory contributes not only to increase the culture and the awareness on nourishing, but becomes a civilization aspect. • Food is not simply nourishment, but it expresses the territory with its history and tradition, it's an occasion to meet and share with others. Giving value to food, recognizing quality and offering its right price is important for the health and for the socioeconomic and environmental sustainable development of the territory.
Quality of a product • Environmental sustainability of the productive service and of the services linked to it (transportation reduction, energy and chemical substances use...) • Social sustainability and ethicity: respect for the manpower • Fair price for all the actors of the production and distribution chain
Environmental Sustainability
QUALITY Social SustaInability and Ethicity
Fair price
Make food your medicine and your medicine the food. Ippocrate
Biological agriculture. The nature we trust. • Biological agriculture: production method that respects health and environment, besides protectiong the variety of animal and plant species that live on the earth (the so called biodiversity). It does not use parasitics and weed killers or chemical fertilizers. Uses natural methods in order to guarantee the productivity of plants and animals. Uses renewable resources, reciclying even the plant and animal waste, in order to improve and maintain the earth's fertility. Biological breeding farm respects particular production, transformation and distribution technics. For example the number of breeded animals has to be defined according to the available land and, when possible, the breeding has to be done outdoor. For the animals' cure homeopathic and herbal medicines are prefered; the cures for growth stimulation, production increase or reproduction control are forbidden.
The EU mark for the BIO products Each type of food that has terms like “biological” or its abreviations “eco” or “bio” and with the EU logo or a national/private biological logo has to be produced according to the severe EU rules. These rules allow the exclusive use of substances authorizes during the different agricultural phases, request well defined practices for the production of plants and animal breeding and need special procedures during each process. Producers working in the biological sector receive at least one in-depth control each year, in order to show their compliance with the biological agriculture rules.
The biological production meets the consumers' request for authentic, high quality and tasty food
Biodynamic agriculture
For more information on biological agriculture: www.organic-farming.eu
It's different from the biological agriculture because it pays particular attention to the fertility of the land and to the interaction with the natural cycles like the moon phases.
Food chain • Is the course that a food product follows from the field to the table: production, transformation, conservation, distribution, selling and consumption. The short distribution chain • Aims at establishing a direct relationship between the producer and the consumer, offering to the consumer the opportunity to buy products directly from the farms that produce them (direct sell) or from the local farmers' markets, reducing the intermediary passages costs and offering a more transparent price.
Zero Km
0 m K
The “zero kilometres” products are products close to the consumer, are in season products: more tasty and without energy waste for conservation and production. Local exchange community (Solidarity based purchasing groups)
It's a group of persons and families that decide to reunite in order to change their own life style through a different way of « shopping ». It's a solidarity based group because at the bottom of all purchases there is the respect and the protection of the environment, of the persons and of their labor. All the purchases are done together, because it is easier to obtain fair and low prices for those who buy and, at the same time, who sells is faily paid for the work done. Purchases from biological producers, from small local producers, from those who produce on the territories confiscated to the mafia, from producers acting in contexts of social reinsertion are prefered. The priority for such a group is always pay attention to « social », to « cooperation », to « solidarity » and to « legality ».
Typical productions • The European Union protects and appreciates the typical food productions of the territories, derived from productive technics linked to the tradition and to the history of the product. These products, obtained by respecting a strict procedural guideline for production, obtain the certification from an indipendent external entity which controls a lot of times and guarantees the respect of the guidelines. They can be recognized thanks to the European marks which are the same in all the member Countries: PDO, PGI and TSG.
PGI PGI, Protected Geographical Indication (Reg. CE 510/06)
In this case it's enough if only one of the production, transformation or elaboration phase takes place in a specific geographical area. The product's origin is nevertheless from that area which gives it a certain quality, fame or other characteristics.
TSG It does not refer to a geographical origin, but to products obtained by using traditional semiprocessed materials or a traditional composition or a traditional production method. A ÂŤ recipe Âť successful in time. Nowadays the only Italian product having the STG mark is the mozzarella.
TSG, Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (Reg. CE 509/06)
Distribution of the denominations for typical food productions
Quality in the glass
COD: are produced in defined areas and have to be sold with the indication of the geographical location and the name of the wine variety. The production procedural guideline is very rigid and the wines can be consumed only after a series of sensorial and chimical analysis.
IGT : wines produced in specific geographical areas, but of larger extent, with a less strict regulation
CGOD When the wine has a high quality obtains the mark CGOD. In this case it has to be sold in cans of less than 5 litres, marked with the number of bottles produced, as a guarantee of origin and quality.
The taste of health Variety and equilibrium of food: better eat a bit of all types of food, with moderation Local and in season products: are better because fresher and healthier The pleasure of cooking: discover traditional family recipes, adapting them attentively in order to reduce fat and make them lighter Simple cooking methods: maintaining the nutritional contents of the food, vitamins and mineral salts. Among these methods: steam, oven, grill, tinfoil wrapping cooking Eliminate food between the main meals: the apetizers and the sweets have a lot of calories and are full of sugar, salt and saturated fat, especially in the industrially processed products, but have little nutritional value.
Fibres and whole grain (wheat, barley, corn, spelt): they are healthy and help prevent some diseses Fruit and vegetables, fresh and in season: 5 portions a day are recomanded, having different natural colors Proteins from the legumes: beans, chickpea and lentils are healthy because they give plant proteins and have a low cost Fish, especially the blu types (sardinas, anchoives, white bream, mackerel...): cheap and full of polyunsaturated fatty acids (the omega 3) which are also calles « the heart-saving fat» Quality fat: some types of fat are essential for the health (omega 6 – from the vegetable oil – and omega 3 – from fish). When spicing, it's better to use quality extravirgin olive oil, better if raw
Aromatic herbs for flavoring: insead of salt, it's better to use herbs like garlic, rosemary, sage, thyme, chives, peppermint, fennel or limon or aromatic vinegar Honey to sweeten: is a natural product (better buy it from the local producers) and contains vitamins, mineral salts and natural antibiotics Fruit for dessert: better a fruit salad, a fruit and honey shake than sweets or sweet beverage which have more calories and less useful nutritional components Calm is the the virtue of the strong ones, even at the table: eating slowly, tasting the food, males it easier to feel the fed-up sensation and digest, besides giving a pleasant feeling of well-being A lot of water (at least 1,5 l per day) and wine with moderation, because of its antioxidant elements that combat aging of the cells and diseases caused by the free radicals.
The project is co-funded by the European Union, Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance