Chef Valbuzzi: “Taste and nourishment with balanced recipes”

When developing a recipe for people with ALS, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, “you have to evaluate the difficulties due to nervous paralysis”, therefore “the difficulty in swallowing or a difficulty in digesting some elements, in using cutlery. Creating recipes that take into account all these aspects is certainly a complicated part, but thanks to cooking techniques, nothing exaggerated, you can find that balance that can then help the patient to eat more easily, to digest and absorb the nutritional principles needed to cope with the disease” and overcome the physical limits it imposes. This is how Roberto Valbuzzi, chef and television host, tells Adnkronos about his participation in the project “Flavours. Links. Autonomy”, a selection of recipes promoted by Aisla (Italian Association of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), Slafood and Zambon Italia with the scientific collaboration of the Nemo Clinical Centers, to make eating compromised by dysphagia, the difficulty in swallowing suffered by people with this rare neurodegenerative disease, more enjoyable.

In the recipe developed for the project that differently interprets the acronym ALS, the chef combined “carrots with kefir probiotics” working on “soft consistencies – explains Valbuzzi – They are a series of requirements that make this a ‘slightly superfood’ recipe that helps, through food”, the fight “against such aggressive diseases” rediscovering the “taste” of the table. My collaboration with Slafood began years ago. Davide (Rafanelli, founder and president of Slafood, ed.) had told me a little about his illness. We had met years before, through a mutual friend. Our relationship was born by exchanging what were the territorial excellences”. After the discovery of the illness “Davide told me that he wanted to leave a mark on his loved ones, but also on all the people affected by ALS. I made myself available for what I could do – he adds – From here the creation of some recipes was born. The latest is, in fact, the carrot cream, in which I put together a bit of my previous experiences.

Food “is fundamental – Valbuzzi emphasizes – It is one of the pleasures in life; therefore, all people who suffer from diseases” that compromise the ability to eat can present problems on a physical level, but also feel a strong impact on a “psychological” level. Thanks to the collaboration with “doctors and experts in the field of food and diseases” we have managed to “create recipes” that overcome certain limits. “We give the opportunity to experience food – he specifies – with a freshness, a joy” that make “you feel better because”, despite ALS, “the patient is still able to enjoy food, rejoice in the moment at the table, like at ‘Sunday lunch’, which for us Italians is very important”.

ALS has a strong impact on a person’s autonomy: “I have seen and touched with my own hands” – the Chef points out – how the disease actually makes a person no longer autonomous. Simply put, through consistencies or the ease of consuming the dish”, you can “give more autonomy”. For example, in the problem of coordination of the limbs and swallowing, avoiding “having to cut things inside the plate” and working with “consistencies that are already very precise, the psychological aspect of these people is certainly helped, in feeling still capable. The more patients feel autonomous, the more they acquire a psychological strength that allows, in my opinion, to truly create a strong contrast with the disease because it gives them the opportunity to ‘still feel like you'”. But be careful, “to develop the most suitable recipes for patients who face these problems”, there is a “secret ingredient: it is the union, the team of professionals, doctors, patients and chefs” who work to “put together a bit of all those aspects that may seem marginal, but which in reality – he concludes – are those details that make the difference on the plate”, but also in life.