Not the air conditioner, not the refrigerator, not the almighty jug: if there’s any human technology that’s stood up to the heat for centuries… this is it. Gazpacho. So with the arrival of summer, Spain goes crazy. Only in the warm months of 2021and consumed more than 100 million liters Packaged gazpacho. Are we taking this delicious meal of God beyond our means?
The question is relevant now that the heat returns.
Let’s start at the beginning… What is gazpacho? In order not to cause confusion (or diplomatic conflicts between regions of the country), I will say that when we talk about gazpacho in this article, I am referring to the traditional Andalusian recipe. That is, in cold soup that carries Tomatoes, cucumber, pepper, garlic, olive oil, vinegar and salt. There are other recipes and they have their own controversies (does it have onions or not?), but basically it’s a selection of those vegetables and water (oil, vinegar and salt).
A liquid salad. So, on paper, it is a very healthy product. A particularly useful tool to hydrate in the summer (due to the high content of mineral salts and water, some call it “natural isotonic”), consume more fiber and include it in the diet. Vitamins A, B-6, C, E, K, folic acid, magnesium or potassium. Obviously, it depends on how much oil (or bread) we add to the recipe, but in general it seems like a preparation with a lot of positive things.
Can it be eaten every day? According to doctor Irene Rodríguez, a specialist in family and community medicine at the Andalusian Health Service, this is a recurring question during consultations during the summer. And the answer is “yes”: “In terms of a varied and balanced diet, gazpacho can be eaten every day.”
For this reason, the answer to the second question is also “yes”. While a varied and balanced diet provides the rest of the essential nutrients, eating gazpacho is not enough to achieve all of the nutrient recommendations. “I don’t know if that’s the word extraBut it is clear that excessive consumption can damage food.
This is not a miracle diet. If we do a quick search on the Internet, we will find dozens of articles that attribute all sorts of properties to gazpacho: cardioprotective effects, vision enhancers, against cognitive decline… In general, it’s about getting on a bandwagon. Scientific papers To directly attribute gazpacho to the effects of specific ingredients and micronutrients. It doesn’t hold.
Of course, gazpacho is a very healthy product by current standards of food intake, but something else. The human diet is much more complex than just adding one more ingredient to our daily lives (or calculating with data from a laboratory). It is not difficult to remember.
Beyond Gazpacho. There are many other cold soups, of course. he white garlic (Almonds, Garlic, Water, Bread, Oil, Vinegar and Salt), d GazpachuelloThe PorridgeThe Vichyssoisehe Polish borscht or the soup family Based on cucumber and yogurt From the Eastern Mediterranean… But the truth is that, with the exception of (perhaps) the latter, the goodness of gazpacho only impresses him.
Not everything goes. Not even gazpacho’s cousins are as healthy. As he Salmorejo (tomato, bread, garlic, oil and salt) etc antequerana baton (tomatoes, bread, red and green peppers, garlic, oil, vinegar, and salt) in their recipes have much more weight than bread and oil, which, according to Rodriguez, requires (in the same context) “their use to be more punctual.”
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Picture | tamorlan
*A previous version of this article was published in June 2023