The Candy Project It is an international initiative that exhaustively analyzes its impact on the body, its culture and origins and especially the new uses that these sweets may have in the food chain.
The chef Andoni Luis Aduriz, has led this project in collaboration with Iñaki Martínez de Albeniz. They also participate The University of the Basque Country, the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Bra (Italy) and the international Slow Food movement.
He was born with the idea of knowing everything about these sweets, their origin, their characteristics, their complex structure of flavors, and of course with the idea of combining pleasure with knowledge.
The candies they have always been in the eye of the hurricane of “nutritional” lenses, linking them to diseases such as diabetes or obesity. In its tasks, it presents the intention of neutralizing this opinion in order to treat them as a food or substance with gastronomic potential.
The Caramelo Project aims to answer the questions that arise when talking about sweets or candies:
- When and how are they consumed?
- What flavors predominate in each country?
- What candies and sweets have they marked in each generation?
Societies have grown and developed with a culture close to sweets, and it is from there that the historical factor begins that seeks to clarify the reasons for its preparation and consumption from a rigorous scientific perspective.
The historical evolution of these sweets will also be analyzed, their influence on childhood and the relationship they have with the formation and evolution of children will be sought. All the information on the content of the “Candy Project” is expanded on the project website.
The project will have two independent modules:
- The generation and learning of basic knowledge of the world of candies.
- The application in gastronomic education of sweets and candies and their development as social innovation.
The result of the study will be used to carry out a “world map”With the cultural diversification of candies and their homogenization in global consumption.
Globalization causes a reduction in food diversity and implies a normalization of certain sociocultural processes and social labels related to sweets.
Candy has been used in childhood education as a reward or punishment resource, it has been related to children’s imagination in the development of their games, etc …
But his formal investigation will let us know new discoveries to be able to carry out applications in a gastronomic context.