Chicken and cheese nuggets, vegetable lasagna, cheesecake, chocolate ice cream… These are some of the recipes that you can find in ‘Real food cooking’, the new book by nutritionist Carlos Ríos in collaboration with chef David Guibert. EFEsalud has spoken with them to learn the keys to the “Realfooding” movement and show you the proof that eating healthy without giving up taste and variety is possible
Cooking empowers you, allows you to be in control. You decide what will reach the plate and your stomach and, consequently, how it will affect your health, for better or for worse ”.
These are the words of the nutritionist promoter of Realfooding, Carlos Ríos, who, after the success of his first book, Eat real food, in which he gave the guidelines for choosing healthy options and avoiding ultra-processed foods, wanted to put all these into practice. teachings.
“In my first book I explained what is food and what is not. In this we want to teach you how to prepare recipes from real food, because, in the end, the way to implement Realfooding is by cooking ”, he explains.
For this he has had the collaboration of the chef David Guibert, with whom he has prepared the more than one hundred recipes included in this publication.
What is Realfooding?
Carlos Ríos (C.R.): Realfooding is a style of eating based on eating real food – that of a lifetime – and avoiding ultra-processed foods. Knowing how to differentiate products from the food offer will allow you to make better decisions in favor of your health, something very important because the environment that will lead, precisely, to the opposite.
How did this project arise, the pairing of nutritionist and chef?
C.R .: I know David from social media, and I knew from the beginning that he was a health-oriented chef. This is important because there are chefs who only take care of the purely culinary and I like that fusion between gastronomic and healthy.
What requirements must a recipe meet to be Realfooding?
David Guibert (D.G.): For a recipe to be healthy, it is important that the ingredients are healthy, but also the way they are cooked. To make things easy, in the book we have prioritized simplicity, ensuring that all the preparations are quick and easy and using ingredients that are very easy to find in the supermarket. In addition, all recipes indicate the difficulty and the preparation time.
In the book there are recipes, such as croquettes or nuggets, that use frying as a way of cooking. Can a fried be healthy?
C.R .: The issue of fried foods is curious because if you use quality oil, such as extra virgin olive oil, and for a single fry, although the dish will have a significant caloric load, it can be healthy. Especially if we compare it with the fried foods of any bar or restaurant, in which refined and highly reused oils are always used. In reuse, heat deteriorates that oil and causes the appearance of some quite unhealthy compounds.
It is true that fried foods have a bad reputation, and with good reason, because they are very caloric, but if you make them at home with a single frying, which is what we propose, the oil is not damaged and it is another way of consuming food. .
D.G .: In any case, in the book we also raised the option of making these recipes in the oven, as there is someone who prefers this cooking method instead of frying.
To what extent does lack of time influence the way we eat?
C.R: Many times people eat less healthy things simply because they are faster to do. I assure you that if they had our recipes already prepared at home, they would choose that, but, unfortunately, the preparation time is something against which we cannot compete with the ultra-processed ones, which often come ready to eat.
Unless you liked cooking because you do it as a pleasant activity, all the time spent in the kitchen for many people is something expendable, because they do not have much time throughout the day.
That is why we have tried to make preparations relatively quick, of 20, 30 or 40 minutes at the most. It is something reasonable and you should have that time to yourself, to take care of your diet.
If you look at the time of use of the applications on your mobile, you will easily get six hours. Do you really not have 40 minutes to invest in health while cooking?
D.G .: In the book we have tried to make recipes that you can find already pre-cooked in the supermarket, such as hummus or quinoa with vegetables. So people can taste the homemade version and notice the difference in the quality of the ingredients and the taste of the ingredients.
Is the myth that healthy eating is boring finally being broken?
C.R .: Fortunately, yes. The proof of this is that on our Instagram account, Realfooding, thousands of people like and save the recipes, because they are truly appetizing. We break the myth that eating healthy is eating lettuce and breast or dieting. Realfooding has nothing to do with that, it is choosing and enjoying the food that you like, because healthy food, that of a lifetime, is delicious; no restriction is required.
D.G .: When you cook with quality ingredients you perceive the real flavor of the food. The thing about ultra-processed foods is that they taste a lot like oil, spices, or a flavor enhancer; all of them are very powerful and quite similar. In these recipes, each main ingredient is the protagonist of the dish.
