Her name is Elena Romeo and she was born in Zaragoza in 1993. and, as of today, he is the first person in the world to have a PhD in Gastronomy. She has achieved this through a thesis named ‘Reduce sugar consumption, don’t change the taste. Research project on the perception of sweetness and multimodal approaches to reduce its consumption’.
Fond of desserts, but trained in Biotechnology at the University of ZaragozaMateo ended up focusing his studies on the world of gastronomy, although more from a theoretical framework than from a practical one.
This is how he arrived at the Basque Culinary Center in San Sebastián, one of the pioneering centers in gastronomy education in the world, where He studied the Master in Gastronomic Sciencesadvancing later in the doctoral program of the same subject.
Physics, chemistry, mathematics, history… The subjects covered by the master’s degree and the doctorate include, as Romeo has explained on several occasions, that “studying the emotional component of food is on the rise.”
A reality in which cooking and science come together through food and that allows healthier habits to be promoted through research. In fact, part of this new gastronomic education means that not only cooks come out of this Basque entity, but photographers, journalists or personnel trained in marketing.
The case of Elena Romeo is different, who has specialized in sensory analysisand that gives examples of how we humans perceive the fact of receiving food, even referring to those intangibles that are as little obvious as studies that show that drinking coffee in a pink cup makes it feel sweeter.
The emotional and the sensory that from more or less explicit levels they make our perception of what we eat or drink change. Everything is also promoted from a link of innovation so that the healthy and the sustainable coexist in that exploration for taste, pleasure and that what is stimulating continues to be sustainable.
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Therefore, focused on a thesis on reducing overweight ratiosis doing a PhD on strategies to reduce the consumption of sugary products to make them attractive in another way, such as adding vanilla.
Images | Basque Culinary Center
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