Paola Di Giambattista, Chef and Healthy Food Specialist is the first first Nutraceutical Chef of Italy. In fact, he has obtained the certification of the'Nutrisal Scientific Institute, chaired by Michele Lampugnani
The Nutraceutical Chef is a modern professional, attentive not only to new food trends, but also to the needs deriving from particular states of health. A fundamental profession, especially at this time, in which consumer habits and consumption are changing and, consequently, also the world of catering. In this context, the Nutraceutical Chef becomes a strategic presence in kitchens and, given the new trend, in all Home Cooking precisely because in addition to being a Chef he also knows the principles of immunonutrition.
In fact, today more than ever, the future of healthy and correct nutrition depends on the knowledge of prevention, because aadequate immune defense it is the only essence of a general and constant well-being. Prof. Emilio Jirillo, Scientific Director of the "Nutrisal" Scientific Institute of Nutrition and Health, underlines how by now we speak more and more often of functional, organic and certified foods. But to become food, these foods must be placed in the hands of capable and prepared people, who know how to treat them, cook them and combine them in the right way.
For some time now, the Nutrisal Scientific Institute has launched a pilot project that takes place in a training course in Immunonutrition and Nutraceutical Principles for healthy and correct nutrition in which a limited and selected number of Chefs took part, who subsequently became certified as Nutraceutical Chefs . The objective of the course, in the first place, was to disseminate the importance of healthy eating. Therefore, it was to train a new highly professional figure, with in-depth knowledge in the sector in order to be able to satisfy the growing need for health prevention through nutrition. The main focuses were: Pathogenesis of diet-related diseases, Nutraceutics and nutritional biochemistry, Immunonutrition, Endocrinological diseases, Super foods (functional foods).
Paola Di Giambattista has accumulated in her career a variety of skills in healthy food translated into valuable services for companies, hotels and restaurants. To companies, to the world of hotels and restaurants, the Chef has offered consultancy related to healthy nutrition, vegetarian/vegan/gluten-free cooking and intolerances oriented towards health problems or ethical-religious choices. For hotels, resorts and restaurants, you develop menus of what you have defined as inclusive cuisine, you train the kitchen staff, define a communication strategy and create customized event formats that include show cooking and food edutainment.
Very young she joined the staff of the Grand Hotel in Rimini, memory of the Fellini tradition. “There – she says – I learned words like hierarchy, superior and unshared spaces. Something I was absolutely not used to. Things that I rediscovered a few years ago when I started to cross the kitchen pass as a consultant chef, to relate to those who work in the kitchen and with those who "set the rules"". At the age of 25 she became a vegetarian and since 2007 she has begun to favor a vegan diet. "A choice that started from health needs, as well as from ethical convictions: thanks to my studies I have scientifically ascertained how much plant-based nutrition can be decisive in "treating" not only the body but also the mind and I have put into practice in the first person”.
