Our kitchen Credo
Much of my time was commissioned writing, almost always about health in one way or another. Creative concepts, speeches, blogs, articles, opinion pieces, film scripts, you name it. Something I really enjoy doing. At Jolliette, I also occasionally write, in my own name. Small articles on our blog when I find the time. Today I made some time for it because this day – World Health Day proclaimed by the World Health Organization – is important to us. Today I write down what health means for Jolliette. It takes me back to our start in early 2020, to our simple idea of 'good health starts with healthy food'.
Role of prevention
After 20 years of working in an industry with a mission to end the devastation of serious chronic, yet oh so complex diseases such as cancer, I have become convinced of the idea of prevention as an important part of the solution. For example, you can help reduce your risk of cancer by making healthy choices, including (but not limited to) healthy, balanced diets.
Scandinavian and Mediterranean diet
Two years ago, when I wrote an article about the Finnish FINGER study led by Professor Miia Kivipelto, I had a real aha moment. The professor shows that various lifestyle changes (such as diet, exercise, brain training) can have an impact on the development of Alzheimer's disease. Among other things, I started following the work of Prof. Kivipelto and zooming in on what those dietary adjustments are. The study followed the healthy Scandinavian diet or 'healthy Nordic diet', which is more or less the same as the Mediterranean diet. It is a lot of fish, a lot of fruits and vegetables and a lot of oils. In the Scandinavian diet, they use rapeseed oil instead of olive oil. They use the dietary recommendations for heart health and reducing the risk of diabetes, and they seem to be in line with what's good for the brain, too. In concrete terms, this means at least five servings of fruit and vegetables per day and replacing the saturated fats with olive oil or rapeseed oil. In terms of healthy components, there has been a lot of focus on nuts lately. Fish is also good - at least twice a week - and, if possible, at least one of these times should be oily fish. See also my short blog about our use of fish.
Simple adjustments in the menu
This and a lot of other research has inspired me to develop a healthy kitchen with fairly simple adjustments to the menu. No fancy theories, no over-focus on health, just the simple principles of the Food Triangle and the general principle of 'everything in moderation'. Today I can summarize our kitchen principles in 3 points:
- Fiber-rich foods and healthy options are our absolute priority.
- Our food should also be joyful and not restrictive. We are not fanatical in our approach to health. For example, there will certainly still be sweets in our menu, but we make every effort to offer as many low-sugar or sugar-free products as possible.
- We believe that food prepared with love in a real warm kitchen tastes better. It was nice to write this down on this World Health Day.
