HOME COOKING: Health Empowerment Strategy in People With Type II Diabetes Mellitus (SUKALMENA)

One of the main factors influencing health is nutrition. Therefore, lifestyle and more specifically healthy eating habits, are key elements for the promotion of healthy lifestyle in society. Eating habits are defined as the more or less conscious, collective and repetitive behaviour that leads people to select, consume and use a certain foods or diet, in response to social and/or cultural influences. The acquisition of eating habits occurs since childhood. For this reason, an education in food and gastronomy is necessary to promote healthy eating habits in society. Education programmes so far have focused on nutrition education, i.e. on transferring theoretical knowledge about nutrition. However, currently, it is known that traditional knowledge about nutrition is not sufficient and it is necessary to go deeper into the factors that determine what people eat, and how people eat.

The studies related to the sensory perception of food and the relationship that this perception has with the choice of food, seek to decipher the keys that make different individuals to have certain eating habits based on: personal tastes, the influence of culture, the emotions that make them feel, learning, and so on. Nutritional recommendations will always be simpler to follow when, implicit in them, the tastes and food choices of each individual are found.

From a holistic perspective, individuals should be considered as a human being within a social, cultural and technological environment. In this sense, gastronomy is defined as "the reasoned knowledge of what people eat and how people eat. It is an interdisciplinary area of knowledge that studies and generates physical-chemical, cultural and socioeconomic processes where human beings cultivate, process, distribute and consume good foods and beverages that affect their physical, mental and social well-being". Gastronomy is a vehicle capable of creating social trends and the convergence of this discipline together with nutritional education can be a more effective tool to disseminate messages about what is considered a healthy diet, how to eat a healthy diet, as well as to transfer cooking skills that allow the population to acquire and sustain these eating habits at home.

Briefly, gastronomy plays a fundamental role in covering the nutritional needs of the general population, and at the same time, it satisfies their expectations of flavour. Therefore, gastronomy is considered a decisive channel to favour education of taste, a better nutrition and, in general, for health promotion.

The effect of nutrition on health is not homogeneous in the population. On the one hand, factors such as the type of food and the culinary techniques used have an influence. On the other hand, individual characteristics such as lifestyle, genetic background and wellbeing must be taken into account. In this context, Personalized and Precision Gastronomy based on individuals' eating habits, genetic profile, intestinal microbiota profile, metabolome, epigenome, tastes and preferences, and so on, in order to develop strategies that favour a healthy and tailor-made diets for each individual.