Qualitaly_120

DEC. JAN. 2021 XV consultant for catering and business on food safety issues. sas.kconsonni@gmail.com ______________________________ AT PAGE 50 HEALTH AT THE TABLE The big binge! Anxiety and stress with Covid: the right foods to gratify and keep emotions at bay by Barbara Panterna This second lockdown was predictable. Yet we all deluded ourselves, we intimately hoped that the damned virus had died out in the heat of summer, liquefied like a jellyfish in the sun. But no, Covid-19 never left, it remained latent waiting patiently for the arrival of autumn to launch the lethal attack. Nothing has been done, especially by those who should have, to prevent the second wave and here we are again overwhelmed, at the mercy of uncertainty, full of anxiety about the nebulous future that awaits us. We are sailing on sight alone, as if a thick fog descended to prevent us from seeing the right way to go. Many questions whizz around in our confused heads, as if they were annoying flies, and to which no one (neither politicians nor distinguished men of science) seems to be able to give clear answers, thus increasing our sense of helplessness and increasing the precariousness that paralyses us. No projects, no risks, we give up those dreams we had fantasized so much about, no concrete decisions are being taken. Everything is postponed until a date to be set and this not living our life to the full, this little freedom of action, for a free people like ours, is a real suffering for the soul that slowly wears down, and this is another aspect that we will have to reckon with. COMPULSIVE HUNGER Italy is made up of many different people in terms of culture, social background etc. who are facing the Covid-19 in the most disparate way. There are those who are reckless and face it with daily imprudence, those who even deny its existence, those who are so terrified of it that they have renounced, since March, a social life by closing themselves within a shell of fear, there are those who manage instead to be more rational and face the evolution of the matter day by day. But we all, or almost all of us, have a common denominator: the compulsive hunger that assails you during the various hours of the day, an “unreal hunger” dictated only by anxiety, by the sense of powerlessness latent in all of us, by stress and above all, for many, by the boredom of never-changing days lived in confinement away from our nearest and dearest. Without forgetting the great discomfort of having lost our privacy. In many families in fact, parents, children, sometimes grandparents find themselves living under the same roof, 24 hours a day, taking advantage of inadequate spaces because, let’s face it, most of us are not lucky enough to live in large houses or in holiday resorts where a walk by the sea is allowed. Not to mention the children, and especially the adolescents, from whom precious goods typical of that age have been brutally stolen: the carefreeness and the time that will not come back. The children are alienated by exhausting video lessons, by homework that has quadrupled as if the teachers were afraid that lessons at home are not taken seriously enough, and the little free time they have left they spend chatting on social media, creating even more detachment between them and their friends, pushing them to live an increasingly virtual and aseptic life. All this is creating in people depression, insomnia, apathy, anxiety... that degenerate into compulsive attitudes because in this moment of difficult precariousness and sadness food becomes the only weapon of consolation. It is immediately satisfying as if it were a miraculous medicine that fills that unbearable emptiness in our stomach, that immediately calms the fear, the anxiety that eats our heart but is highly detrimental to our health. Already after the first lockdown many people complained about a considerable increase in weight. I have had patients who have gained as much as 6/8 kg in a short time. This second lockdown risks becoming fatal and giving us the coup de grace. In my daily practice I have seen, from March to today, a significant deterioration in the clinical situation of many of my hypertensive patients, diabetics etc. as they have failed - and are unable - to find the right grit and motivation to follow a correct dietary regime. The foods most commonly used to console oneself are chocolate, of all types: milk, dark, white, hazelnut. And bakery products. The average Italian has discovered the pizzaiolo in himself, so much so that pizza/ focacce and bread, both homemade and not, are among the favourite foods for adults and children. You have more time to cook and therefore have fun experimenting with new elaborate recipes such as homemade pasta with special sauces, gnocchi etc. All foods that give a sense of “spiritual” satisfaction and immediate satiety but, being foods with a high glycemic index, they trigger a negative waterfall for the body because after the glycemic peak you return to having the immediate requirement for something sweet and this leads us, for example, soon after dinner, to have the urgent need for a pre-bedtime treat and so on; it then triggers a chain of endless excesses that gets out of hand. But, at the moment, giving nutritional advice is not easy because it will hardly be followed. When a person is in serious emotional distress and wants to console himself or herself with food, he or she goes in search of the most forbidden, the most delicious and obviously the most harmful food in terms of health and fitness. And even if I told you that your health is at stake, that the majority of patients who have been seriously affected by Covid-19 are overweight/obese and diabetics, and even if I explained to you that the immune system is affected by excess sugar and fat, I would not be able to stop your binges. PRACTICAL TIPS On my social pages (FB as dr.ssa Barbara Panterna and Instagram with Barbara Panterna), I always try to advise, post, daily tasty recipes in a lighter version that you too, as a restaurateur, could try to create for your customers. This is how you will find the dessert after dinner, perhaps based on yoghurt and fruit, such as a low-fat yoghurt to which you can add vanilla bourbon, hazelnut grains or almonds and baked