When I think of a food upheaval for our society, I think strongly of children. I think of a sort of nutritional re-education that needs to be offered primarily by parents and to which professionals in the sector contribute with interest across the board.

We must make children protagonists.
We should start by letting the newer generations breathe traditions, those of the family, of their own country, listen to their grandparents and invest in a verbal transmission that, now, for many reasons, seems to have disappeared.

In our lives, how many memories are channeled through the food, the aromas, the sensations that surrounded us as children!? 

It still comes to my mind – warming my heart a little – the aroma of potatoes that my grandmother boiled, when she was looking after me as I recovered from the flu at her house.
I remember time passing slowly, the smell of ragout cooking, the result of a slow and methodical morning routine. How I would have loved to use those strange tools: the potato masher and the “Riga gnocchi” …
And then that patient waiting… to see if everyone had a full plate to then have seconds.

For that love I breathed in one room, the kitchen – both my grandmother and my mother’s – I tried to teach my two daughters the “cult” of food.
Food conceived as a social occasion, flavors, knowledge, traditions. I have never held back on stories, to go to wild herbs, to discover the supply chains. I tried to make them as autonomous as possible in the kitchen, leaving this space for them to experiment, smell, maneuver, enjoy the results or activate a plan b.
I appealed to Maria Montessori and her belief in DOING.
With excellent results, not in terms of finished product but that of experience.

Specifically, laboratories should be created in food shops, restaurants, ice cream parlors, herbalists, at the bakers, they need to be playful and engaging. Spaces capable to attracting the attention of the senses toward the creation of a finished product, the perception of the place that hosts the course.
Children are like sponges that absorb every facade, but which too often are then abandoned.

We could create for them ad hoc itineraries, ad hoc books, visits to old workshops that show the skills handed down over time by people who carry out antique traditions.

If I think about Italy and look at it from north to south, I really see a boot full of these opportunities, of museums, of traditions, of artisans, of flavors, of sociability that hides a strong moral genuineness.

A child cannot be passionate about something that they don’t know.