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Diario ELPAIS
The British Hospital organizes different activities in the context of its educational and prevention politics in health. Combining theory with practice, and as a way to introduce tools to the families so that they can affront the challenge, the British Hospital undertook a series of workshops about gluten free cooking, which included the elaboration and baking of croissants and country bread. Lead by Nutrition Graduate Fernanda Larrea and by the British Hospital’s Gastronomical Services Head, Chef Adrián Parrilla, three workshops were held, focused on gluten free cuisine and on the preparation of gluten free flours. Each workshop started with a presentation by the nutrition specialist as way of introduction to the job of preparing and baking aliments along with Parrilla and the team of the hospital’s gastronomical services. About eighty British Hospital’s members participated at the workshops, standing out the presence of carriers of coeliac disease as well as people who reached the British Hospital with the intention of adding tips and tools to elaborate aliments for their relatives impeded to consume gluten. The coeliac disease, which is found equally among children and adults, is an autoimmune digestive disorder by which some genetically predisposed people develop an intolerance to gluten, a protein present in cereals such as wheat, oats, barley and rye. (TACC) It’s estimated that 40% of the population has a genetic predisposition to coeliac disease but only 1% develops it, and that for each diagnosed case there are still 5 to 10 without diagnosis. The coeliac disease is a chronic condition for which until now there’s no healing treatment, and in Uruguay about 35.000 people suffer from it. “The whole idea was to share tools in order to change the paradigm that we can’t live without gluten”, said Parrilla. The chef narrated that he made an investigation with his team and worked on the preparation of gluten free aliments, seeking an attractive proposal that could encourage the exchange with the participants. “Our cuisine library grew and is now more complete” he summarized and highlighted the compromise of the hospital’s Gastronomical Services team, who investigated, tested ingredients and tried out preparations until achieving the expected results. Lead by Parrilla and his team, the participants prepared country bread, croissants and pumpkin gnocchi. To make them they used “natural and gluten free ingredients” that substituted the traditional ingredients achieving a similar result regarding touch, scent and flavour. Maize cotton, yucca and potato starch, powdered milk, buckwheat flour, rice flour, chickpea and pea flours were some of the ingredients used to achieve a result that Parrilla qualified as “excellent, not only because of the final product but also because of the preparation and exchange experience, which was much more than merely sharing a recipe”.