Cold pressure feeding: the technology that can reduce food waste
On the Day of Sustainable Gastronomy, celebrated on June 18 of each year, the United Nations wants to recognize this activity as a cultural expression, but also to preserve wildlife and traditions. Joan Roca, who - along with his brothers - is a goodwill ambassador for the UN Development Program, knows how necessary it is to make kitchens all over the planet respect the environment, whether in a three-star restaurant or in any apartment. For those who share food, but also for those who share the planet.
Why is it important to bet on sustainable cuisine? I think it is important to bet on sustainable gastronomy to the extent that sustainability or the relationship that we maintain with that awareness of sustainability will mark the future of humanity. It is key that we begin to become aware of all this. We do it from the kitchen: it is a platform that allows us to launch messages and raise awareness.
But it is obvious that this applies to everyone, it concerns families, it concerns companies and obviously it also applies to administrations. Somehow we have to start looking with different eyes at all that environment in which we live and that we have to take care of. And the first thing we notice is with the products that do not reach the kitchens and how we cook and exactly where they arrive from. All of these things people are becoming more and more interested in for obvious reasons. And I think it is the line, it is the way and it is a necessity, on the other hand. On a general level, would you say that we are aware that the kitchen is also something that pollutes? Likewise, the widespread idea that we have of contamination is a plastic bag or an exhaust pipe and not so much consuming products that come from far away, consuming nearby products is key,but it is even more important, and I believe that there is the great fight, the waste; 30% of food we waste. It is a shockingly terrible figure: 30% of the world's food production is wasted. And in that we can do a lot from the kitchen.
But in addition to teaching, raising awareness, that people take better advantage of what we buy and not throw it away. And that I think is a responsibility that we cooks began to have, but not only those of us who work in restaurants, but also cooks, cooks who cook in our homes. I think that is where the key is. It is the powerful part of the change; that people who cook at home know how to make good use of it, that the right thing, what they need and that they do not throw consumable products in the trash. It costs a lot to produce them and therefore it is important that they are used to the maximum. And how can this message be transmitted? Well, we do it by generating information, small videos that tell how you can take advantage of parts of a vegetable that you do not use or get more out of it. to the things that come to your house.I think it is a slow pedagogical task, surely, but necessary and effective to the extent that we can reach people. It is a matter of generating awareness above all, because then it is evident that the gastronomic results can be more or less appetizing and interesting for those who want to listen to them. It is more to be aware that what we throw away can sometimes have a route, a life, it can still be useful in the kitchen. Returning to citizens, how can they take it to their homes? You, for example, have a collaboration with BBVA to bring home ingredients for a dish for a monthly subscription. What we do with BBVA is based on this line.Essentially this project aims to help and give visibility to small producers who served restaurants like us and who saw their work cut off during the pandemic. That is why we gave them visibility and gave them business through this initiative. That is a concrete initiative whose background has that idea.
But above all I think it is more efficient to be able to give messages through tricks, through videos. Fortunately in the kitchen today we enjoy a visibility that has never had as a trade before. I think that comes with a great responsibility to make that visibility useful. And to make it useful, today, is to talk about these things and highlight those little things. Every time we can make people realize, think or reflect on what they do at home. In fact, what we are trying to make people see is that they do what their parents or grandparents did, because they already knew about the use. It is a bit to look back in this regard, as it is also in the field of agriculture. We have gone so fast that we do not realize that we are loading the planet.Looking back a little is the key to see how everything that came to the kitchens was used well before and how there were many technical, conceptual, gastronomic resources, to make things more traveled in a domestic kitchen or in a professional kitchen Let's look ahead now: are the new generations coming with sustainability as standard? Is it for these people something inalienable and logical? I think so. In this sense I am very optimistic because I see the new generations, the generation of my children, very concerned about sustainability, recycling, reusing things, making good use of what comes. I don't know if it's because our generation has passed it on. Or perhaps also that work that teachers have developed in schools. I see them much more committed, more aware.That is a halo of hope for the future.
It is true that we have to look back to see how they did it before, but it is also true that the future lies in these new generations, who I think are much more aware of the problem we have. And they know how to find those paths and choose what to buy, what not to buy and why. And then, and this is already a little more difficult, how you cook it. Some people will continue to look for those shortcuts to continue eating products that are ready-made and so on. But hey, in trying to know what they buy, where it comes from and how they have cooked what they are going to consume ... With that we already earn a lot.How is the idea of sustainable gastronomy different from haute cuisine? Is it easier because the public is more open to different proposals or is it more difficult because expectations are higher? Indeed, expectations are very high and we have to maintain the highest level while respecting the environment. But, on the other hand, it is something natural; It is part of our work to maintain that commitment to creativity, to the avant-garde, to innovation and, at the same time, to be respectful of the environment.
When we are in an area like us in Girona, an area very rich in geoclimatic diversity, we have very diverse and very varied products. And that is a great advantage, because working with local products we have a great diversity that allows us to offer a gastronomic offer of great variety. But it is obvious that it is a challenge of the future. The challenge of the future for haute cuisine restaurants is going to be this, because the customer also demands that you have a commitment to sustainability. I think this is going to be linked and it is something that we see more and more. How do you do it? We tell the client that the tableware with which we are going to serve them is recycled glass that we recycle in our own workshop that they can later visit or that our uniforms are made, in this case thanks to the initiative with BBVA,with recycled plastic that converted into uniforms. All these issues are important and highly valued by the gourmet public that nowadays moves to discover interesting gastronomic proposals, but is also very sensitive to that commitment to sustainability that restaurants may have. Do you think that the pandemic has made look more at the environment and the importance of sustainability? I think so. I think the pandemic has made us stop to think and reflect on many things. Being aware that we have to take care of the planet is something that has penetrated, that it is there. That it was already there, but that it will be something that will be much more present in our way of thinking about the future. In the immediate future, for sure,and I hope also in the long-term future in order to achieve the sustainable development goals. They are goals that we share globally and we all have to start putting thread in the needle so that we can make them come true. Thousands of restaurants, if not all, have had financial problems during this time. How have they raised it in your case? Can the commitment to sustainability be a way to face it? In our case it has been like that. We dedicate the first four months of the first confinement to reform our kitchen to make it more sustainable, more energy efficient, in order to improve the traceability of the products when they arrive at the restaurant.They are goals that we share globally and we all have to start putting thread in the needle so that we can make them come true. Thousands of restaurants, if not all, have had financial problems during this time. How have they raised it in your case? Can the commitment to sustainability be a way to face it? In our case it has been like that. We dedicate the first four months of the first confinement to reform our kitchen to make it more sustainable, more energy efficient, in order to improve the traceability of the products when they arrive at the restaurant.They are goals that we share globally and we all have to start putting thread in the needle so that we can make them come true. Thousands of restaurants, if not all, have had financial problems during this time. How have they raised it in your case? Can the commitment to sustainability be a way to face it? In our case it has been like that. We dedicate the first four months of the first confinement to reform our kitchen to make it more sustainable, more energy efficient, in order to improve the traceability of the products when they arrive at the restaurant.How have they raised it in your case? Can the commitment to sustainability be a way to face it? In our case it has been like that. We dedicate the first four months of the first confinement to reform our kitchen to make it more sustainable, more energy efficient, in order to improve the traceability of the products when they arrive at the restaurant.How have they raised it in your case? Can the commitment to sustainability be a way to face it? In our case it has been like that. We dedicate the first four months of the first confinement to reform our kitchen to make it more sustainable, more energy efficient, in order to improve the traceability of the products when they arrive at the restaurant.
It also allowed us to work with our small producers and make a record to be able to deepen that relationship and generate more complicity between us and them in order to continue working at the highest level of quality. In this is also the fact of making these small producers able to generate resources to continue doing their work. That is, to be able to better choose what we want them to raise and at what prices we are going to pay it. That is, the wealth that a restaurant generates, being able to generate it in its environment. They are little things that if we are all doing we can contribute to this false economic and environmental sustainability of our environment. And also social, which is another area in which the restaurant can also be decisive. We hire people at risk of exclusion: we understand that caring for people is key.In what sense? We have had a plan for years in which, in part of our working hours, we decide to spend time listening to the teams, to improve emotionally at work. In a highly competitive restaurant like ours, it is sometimes necessary to dedicate time, resources and qualified personnel to this. We have a specialist in emotional management to precisely improve sustainability from the human point of view in the company. I think this time of confinement has also been key for us all to realize that it is something that we cannot put aside, but that it is very important. In your case, how did this come to be? Was it a conscious decision or was it more of a logical step to suddenly see yourself there? I think it is a logical step. We began to be aware of it six or seven years ago, when we realized how important it is.Also to some extent when the ONY makes us goodwill ambassadors for the United Nations for the sustainable development plans that it launched in 2016. We saw ourselves with a certain responsibility to do it well. First do it well at home and then try to spread those messages as much as possible. It is a question of responsibility, but also, as you said, of a natural conviction that comes as you begin to observe and begin to realize that the world if we do not take care of it we are going to take it on ourselves. We start with the kitchen and the primary sector, which is key. We have to take care of it, pay attention to it,protect small producers and that biodiversity necessary so that we can maintain all those ecosystems that will allow us to still have all those spices in the future and not lose them along the way.
I think it is something complex, it is not easy. From the kitchen we can do things and we try, but it is also obvious that governments have to help, they have to put measures in place and they have to observe everything that is happening and support us. Because if the cooks alone weren't going to do it, obviously. In the kitchen there seems to be a very important movement to defend the environment, with chefs like Eneko Atxa or yourself. Can we get to a point where the epithet of sustainable will be redundant because all gastronomy is going to be sustainable? That is the ideal point and here we want to get there. And here we should arrive: that we do not have to continue talking about sustainability because sustainability is already the norm. Stop talking about sustainability would be great; a time when the kitchen is normalized,It is logical and it is pure common sense to do what we now say we have to do. And can the kitchen be a kind of Trojan horse by which between environmental and emotional sustainability that I commented both in society and in homes ?It's possible. The kitchen is very transversal. The kitchen is economy, it is culture, it is health, it is sustainability, it is emotion ... The kitchen has made humanity grow to the extent that we have been able to cook the products that come from that environment that we care for and that cares for us. and it protects us and that we have to protect and take care of as well. I think it is key. The kitchen is a very versatile tool; It is a very powerful tool if we look at it from that key to see that it is interconnected, that there is an ecosystem around the kitchen.Depending on how it is understood, it can help to improve many things in that relationship of humanity with the environment, with the environment.
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