Two young graduates rethought the way of traveling and tourism in the days of Covid-19. For an Italy to rediscover
Covid-19 has profoundly changed many habits, the way we relate to people, the way we conceive going out with friends, how to rethink holidays and travel. We have not stopped dreaming or even imagining the well-deserved summer holidays, but, perhaps, for the next few months the management of travel will be more local, with destinations more affordable for everyone, often a few kilometers from home. Because you can also travel very close to your residence: it is not said that travel should be understood only over long distances.
The Italian Trotter
Here is the story of two young, very enterprising young people, Elena Pasero and Valerio Dogliotti, both graduated from the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo. In recent years they have visited and lived in various countries around the world, worked in hospitality and catering. Now they have decided to return to Italy and create a project to promote the Italian and Piedmontese territory: to provide guests with a tailor-made experience, sustainable travel solutions, bringing them to know the local indigenous realities.
With a few clicks food and wine tourism and sustainability enter into symbiosis, giving life to the dream trip. A holiday linked to the culture of good food and agri-food products, the flavors of local cuisine, wines and local delicacies. Stays in breathtaking structures and exclusive castles, direct contact with sought after local producers, author chefs and rediscovery of regional identity traditions. Taste experiences in starred restaurants, family restaurants and gourmet picnics; educational workshops and farmers markets, village festivals and gastronomic fairs.
The Italian Trotter – your foodie dream tour it is all this, and not only. A trip organized with The Italian Trotter is not seen only more as a holiday, but as a memorable event, which allows you to learn new skills having fun and giving value to the territory visited. The itineraries are aimed at the foreign market, especially the US market, but this year, due to the pandemic, they had to look for a way to reinvent themselves and rethink their business. It was not easy, they rolled up their sleeves and created several ad hoc travel packages aimed at Italian tourists to rediscover all the beauties that Piedmont has to offer. The promotion of exclusive itineraries in the Langa and Monferrato, territories often unknown even by the Piedmontese themselves.
The packages can be viewed on the Italian Trotter website.
Obesity is a risk factor for many diseases. The most recent studies say it could lead to more serious complications even in the case of coronavirus. Are you "skinny" sure that you are not obese?
Obesity is one of the main risk factors for premature death and the onset of many diseases. From type 2 diabetes to cancers. According to the latest scientific research, obesity is a factor that makes health more fragile even towards Covid-19. Confirmation comes from the World Health Organization. The virus in obese people can cause more serious symptoms and complications. "In several recent studies, the role of obesity as an incident on the prognosis of infection has been confirmed," he comments Nicoletta Bocchino, nutritionist biologist. "According to scientific evidence for people under 60 years of age obesity would be a risk factor for the severity and need for hospitalization and intensive care," says the expert. "Patients suffering from obesity in fact suffer from a series of disorders that predispose them to viral infections especially respiratory infections, such as type 2 diabetes, low-grade chronic inflammation that causes an increase in the production of cytokines, circulating inflammatory molecules , hypertension . This implies a number of issues relevant to public health. "Just think that the percentage of obese people, that is, who have a body mass index (BMI) greater than 30, in Italy, but also in the rest of the world, is very high".
Who is obese?
When we talk about obesity we often imagine that a person suffering from it is a fat person with many extra pounds. In reality it is not so. Often even those who appear thin in their build can be metabolically obese. «Many people, although they do not have many excess pounds, can have a metabolism very similar to that of an obese person in the strict sense, that is, with a high fat mass and an accumulation of fat deposits in the liver. The causes can be genetic or linked to wrong lifestyles such as stress, poor physical activity associated with a high consumption of carbohydrates ", explains nutritionist Nicoletta Bocchino.
How to tell if you are obese
"The body mass index actually says little about the true composition of the body because it derives from the relationship between two numerical values: weight and height. The weight, however, is given by both the lean and the fat mass. This means that an apparently thin person can have a greater fat mass than a person who seems more robust, "says nutritionist Nicoletta Bocchino. Finally, there is another factor to consider: age. "As the years go by, the (lean) muscle mass decreases, the fat mass increases and the body composition changes. The increase in fat mass occurs mainly in the abdominal level, increasing visceral fat and the waist-hip ratio. In short, one is obese when body fat exceeds values between 10 and 15% of the weight for men and between 22 and 26% for women ".
Find out in the gallery what to do to combat fat mass
The new health regulations are forcing many locals to archive expensive old paper menus. Here then are the alternatives put in place by technology
The menu, as an object, has its undeniable charm. Its details, its paper, the character with which it was written and yes, even its state of conservation can tell us a lot about the place where we are going to eat, making us anticipate – or fear – the imminent gastronomic experience. Can you imagine, for example, a restaurant in haute cuisine with menu written in Comic Sans on crumpled blue paper? No, here it is. There is a problem, however, far from marginal: the health emergency triggered by coronavirus it is forcing us to do without any tactile experience. Because even browsing through a very simple list of first, second and side dishes – enclosed within your own leatherette folder – could turn into an opportunity for contagion. And no, in this case any greasy patches on the pages – which remain always and in any case unforgivable – really have nothing to do with it.
The truth is that unfortunately the virus can lurk on surfaces, including paper or plastic. And for this reason exchanging the menu between diners or, even worse, between tables can involve a risk. True, it would be roughly enough sanitize the pages and give customers the opportunity to clean their hands immediately after ordering their dinner, perhaps with a gel kindly offered by the house. But many have preferred to avoid this practice a little hospital, opting instead for the road – sustainable also on an environmental level – digital.
Many had stopped betting on it. that square convoluted in black and white, which sometimes our smartphone categorically refused to recognize, seemed to have taken the avenue of those technological innovations potentially capable of epochal revolutions, but defeated to the test of facts. Instead, the QR Code has become the ideal ally of all those restaurateurs who have decided to stop distributing their menus as a precaution. Yes, because basically the menu problem can be solved by disseminating some here and there in the restaurant totem that the customer can frame with their smartphone and then calmly consult the card directly from the screen.
Of course, there remains a basic problem, which should not be underestimated: to which page to redirect the customer's smartphone? The solutions implemented are the most imaginative, and range from the photo published on the Facebook page of the restaurant – with words so blurry that they cannot distinguish a "carbonara pasta" from a "the cost of the cover is 1.50 euros" – to some pdf. Sometimes well done, sometimes ugly enough to have been commissioned for a few pennies to the cousin of the cousin of the tomato sauce supplier. But he did an online graphics course, so he knows about it.
However, there are those who have decided to use a little more structured services, such as those of SafeTable. In this case, the restaurateur has the possibility to choose between three different types of menus, totally customizable: only with text, with introductory photos for each category, with photos for each individual dish. All translatable into 12 languages, to help that international clientele that – we hope – will soon return to popular clubs and bars in our cities. SafeTable also offers small Plexiglas totems with printed QR Code, to be distributed on the various tables, and any photo shoots made ad hoc. So no, no fluttering piece of paper that passes from customer to customer, and no ambiguous photos of fried squid surrounded by Paint.
It is possible, however, to think of going a little further, always starting from a QR Code, but making the menu vaguely more interactive. It is the case of Kill-Bill, a service with a curious name from Taranto, which however does not include duels of forks and bloodshed between tables rivaling the cry of "You stole the last tiramisu from me". No, don't worry, the idea devised by two young people from Viterbo is more simply to integrate the possibility of order independently. In short, just like with food delivery proposals.
Each QR Code is actually also connected to a table number and this allows the waiter to simply check the correctness of the order remotely and then pass it to the kitchen. This makes everything safer and further decreases the chances of contagion between staff and customers, although perhaps it could make the dynamics of the restaurant a little too cold and automated. So all perfect for i younger and more informal places, a little less for those who have always seen one of their flagships in service. Although in the times of Covid-19 the rule of "less frills and more Amuchina" still applies, beyond any possible cuteness.
The QR Code, as we have seen, is undoubtedly the most immediate ally to transport the paper menu to the digital world. But it is not the only one, of course, among the various possibilities there is also that ofapp to download. Definitely more invasive, because it presupposes that the customer invests part of his time and his Giga for download, and above all that he has sufficient free space in the memory of your smartphone, usually clogged with memes of kittens, screenshots of the ex's Facebook states and unidentified videos from some group chat. That of the 4B parents, perhaps, but who knows.
Those who decided to bet on the app, therefore, are above all those who have sufficient strength, scope and diffusion to justify such an IT effort. Like the big fast food chains. Burger King, for example, has decided not only to transfer a large part of its services to smartphones, but to further expand them always with a view to Covid Free.
The new app of the American chain of hamburgers allows you to browse the menu of proposals, order completely independently and even pay, always via smartphone, thus also reducing all the risks related in some way to the passage of money or the use of cards. Not only that: customers are even allowed to book your table at the fast food restaurant, to make sure you find a free place without having to wander around the restaurant with the harness of a mask with the desperation of a Milanese looking for a parking space in Porta Romana. Interesting, without a doubt.
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