WORLD FOOD DAY: THE FOOD SHUTTLE TOUCHES DOWN AT THE GASLINI HOSPITAL

For the second year in a row on the occasion of World Food Day we will be at the Giannina Gaslini Institute in Genoa for a series of initiatives intended to educate people about healthy diets for young children. The day’s events will culminate in the touch down of our Food Shuttle, an innovative project to educate children about taste and well-informed food consumption. 

Through active exploration and by using immersive technologies that amplify the five senses, children will be able to learn more about the things they eat every day. The project calls for the use of devices such as VR headsets, laser and 3D printers, digital microscopes, stills, juicers, essence diffusers, thermoformers and vacuum packing machines.

To further underscore the importance of educating people about a healthy diet, the menu that we will serve on 16 October at the Gaslini Institute will be characterised by special dishes, made with organic fair-trade farm-to-table ingredients and MSC-certified sustainably caught fish.

Lastly, with a view to improving the information available to all those who use the food services, beginning in November we will be making the MENU CHIARO APP available to all Institute employees, enabling them to view all of the dishes being served at the restaurant each day, including details about calorie content and nutrients, in addition to useful diet tips.

“This year the theme of World Food Day is a well-informed diet, in other words, the need to be increasingly aware of what it is we are eating and of how, every day, we can achieve healthy diets – not only from a nutritional standpoint, but also from the point of view of eco-sustainability and fair-trade. The Giannina Gaslini Institute has always placed a strong emphasis on food education, whether as part of the clinical approach it takes with in-patients and out-patients of every age group or in the context of the nutritionally balanced menus it offers through its hospital and office catering services, as well as with nutritional education programmes and events targeting daycare centres, schools of all types and for all age groups, and for the general public. All of this is made possible by drawing on the synergy that exists between the dieticians and physicians at the Institute, the physicians from the Centre for Nutrition, from the Paediatric Clinic - Regional Centre for Paediatric Diabetology, from Gastroenterology, from the Hospital School and from our Training Centre.” Paolo Petralia, Director General of Gaslini, explains.

“Every day, at the clinic in the Centre for Nutrition, we mostly evaluate patients with malnutrition due to excess, meaning patients who are overweight or obese, and patients with eating disorders, who are consequently at a high risk of malnutrition due to deficit. The keystone of our treatment of these patients remains nutritional education and a well-informed diet, intended to foster a preference for healthy food choices, especially by children and adolescents, but also on the part of their family members.” explains Paolo Fiore, Director of the Gaslini Centre for Nutrition.

“At CIRFOOD, our commitment to disseminating a culture of healthy, high-quality and good-tasting food is one of the foundational values that guides the organisation's operations. That is why we create initiatives whose goal is to educate people, children in particular, so as to accustom them to viewing the experience of eating as an opportunity for conviviality, good health and well-being. We are therefore very happy to be able to promote those values in collaboration with an organisation like the Gaslini Institute, which is devoted above all to providing care for children” says Michele Attolini, North-West Regional Area Manager for CIRFOOD.