The department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health of the University of Navarra participates together with the Basque Culinary Center (BCC) in a research on gastronomy, nutrition and diabetes. This is a culinary Education program that aims to evaluate the effect that specific cooking workshops can have on people with diabetes, in addition to the nutritional Education .

The project is named Sukalmena, result from merging the words sukaldatu (cooking) and ahalmena (capacity). It has received funding from the network Guipuzcoana Science, Technology and Innovation Program and is directed by BCC Innovation PhDs Usune Etxeberria and Lucía Gayoso, along with chefs Estefanía Simón and Paula Torán. They have been joined by Dr. Leticia Goñi, dietician-nutritionist, and Dr. Miguel Ruiz-Canela, professor at School of Medicine. "This project complements very well the programs of study that we develop in the department, since improving culinary techniques is a way to put in internship the advice and nutritional information that we usually provide in programs of study of intervention with per diem expenses Mediterranean aimed at the prevention of chronic diseases", Goñi points out.

The Mediterraneanper diem expenses is characterized, precisely, by the use of foods with little processing, which is why it is presented as the most beneficial for people with diabetes. In this context, Ruiz-Canela stresses the importance of ensuring that dietary and nutritional information reaches homes correctly: "Our work may be insufficient if we do not get patients to eat dishes cooked at home and minimize those they eat outside the home. Nowadays this is complicated by the lack of time: not cooking at home leads to resort to ultra-processed foods as an easy way, but we know that this is not healthy. Here is the challenge of project: helping patients to recover healthy culinary traditions by adapting them to current lifestyles".