The Christmas It’s the month of the confectionery derby par excellence, perhaps even more heartfelt than Roma-Lazio or Milan-Interthe one between panettone and pandoro. Two opposing factions that defend the goodness of one or the other protagonist of the desserts under the albaero. But who wins from a nutritional point of view? Answering this question for Adnkronos Salute is Mauro Minelliimmunologist and professor of Fundamentals of dietetics and nutrition at Lum University. “Having to choose between panettone and pandoro, both traditional desserts made up of flour, sugar and butter, while giving due consideration to our personal tastes, at least – suggests Minelli revealing who wins the nutritional challenge – let’s try to remember that, compared to panettone, pandoro is much richer in butter and, therefore, has a higher caloric impact”. The advice therefore, which applies to both, is “maximum one slice of 150 grams, but for breakfast”.
In this perennial dualism, even regional given that panettone originates from Lombardy and pandoro is a typically Veneto product, new culinary trends also insinuate themselves. So these two desserts undergo revisitations and ‘decompositions’, but the tradition seems to hold even if now every panettone on sale is branded as ‘artisan’. “There are those who, to the sacredness of the most common recipes, make an effort to contrast the creativity of innovative and imaginative solutions with the search for an exclusivity that is able to capture attention, always in the name of taste. on the other hand, it is a mystery – reflects the immunologist – that the trend for gourmet reinterpretations of the classics of the Italian confectionery tradition is increasingly establishing itself”.
“The ways in which this trend can materialize – analyzes the expert – range from the simple re-edition of a dish with the creation, for example, of a lemon ‘cheesecake’ in a glass, to the ‘improper’ consumption of a panettone used to create a cake covered in chocolate icing. But there are also those who, with more time and imagination, use struffoli as a base on which to lay honey mousse and almond brittle or those who, manipulating dry almond biscuits, create millefeuille of cantucci biscuits flattened with cream semifreddo, or who, after cutting a simple pandoro into discs, fills it with orange cream or with a ricotta and chocolate mousse”.
Whatever the dish, whether gourmet or traditional, “the culinary choices cannot, however, avoid being full of sugar and fat and, therefore, so high in calories that they cannot properly be included in the famous ‘food pyramid’, the most universal graphic representation of the healthy and correct Mediterranean diet – recalls Minelli – But, evidently not being able to exclude the sweet approach to the delicacies prepared for the holidays, with the clear intention of making us tastier (and not fatter), we can at least try to make that moment as prudent and thoughtful as possible. So that having to choose, for example, between panettone and pandoro, both traditional desserts composed of flour, sugar and butter, while giving due consideration to our personal tastes, at least let’s try to remember that, compared to panettone, pandoro is much richer in butter and, therefore, more high caloric impact“.
“There gourmet cuisine, having attention to careful but also minimal portions on its side, certainly reduces the calorie intake. Furthermore, in gourmet cuisine, new cooking methods or new nutritional strategies have been experimented in order to create sweets with a low metabolic impact. An example in this sense is given by the use of fruit aimed at reducing the quantity of simple sugars, or by the use of wholemeal flours or dried fruit to increase the quantity of fibre”, remarks the immunologist.
And so the message to keep in plain sight above the tree that we are preparing to decorate is that, if for Christmas we wanted to buy a dessert that is gourmet or that belongs to the most ancient and sacred of our traditions, it will always be important and appropriate read the label carefully and choose, perhaps, that dessert which certainly has sugar in the list of ingredients but is not positioned at the top of that list. If this were the case, in fact, sugar would be the most abundant component of the product given that, in the list of ingredients, the substances used to make the food are generally mentioned in decreasing order of weight – he warns – as if to say that the first food the ingredient used in the greatest quantity will appear, followed by all the others in decreasing sequence. Other precautions to be taken could be to choose a dessert made possibly with wholemeal and unrefined floura, or that of excluding products containing glucose or fructose syrups which significantly increase the glycemic index of an already sweet food”.
“After that, for Christmas and for the days that will come after the festive occasion, ‘measure’ remains the wisest and most correct element of discrimination – observes the nutrition teacher – On the other hand, it has always existed and forever there will be an abysmal difference between the gastronome (‘gourmet’) and the glutton (‘glutton’). ‘One is a gourmet as one is an artist or a poet’ wrote Guy de Maupassant. Which is to say that the true gourmet is distinguished from the glutton because knows how to choose food, not only on the basis of its quality, but also on the basis of the quantity that must be sufficient to satiate him, without exceeding the right doses. It is precisely on these bases – he concludes – that conscious eating becomes the first important step for prevention and protection of health, well-being and – why not – also good taste and aesthetics”.
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