Eating properly is always the first premise for taking care of our health. In these times, gastronomy plays a preponderant role in this respect. When we need to raise our immune system, to face symptoms and possible diseases and to cure ourselves of them, we cannot turn our backs on the hundreds of foods whose properties nourish us, relieve us and heal us, but neither on the way we access them or are presented to us.

Excelencias Gourmet attests to this gastronomy. A healthy, supportive, sustainable and satisfactory diet, as proposed by the Ibero-American Academy of Gastronomy in its four-pronged assessment, was already indispensable. These days, each of these aspects demands greater attention. In the same way that, according to Doctor Valentín Fuster, virtually 50% of our health depends on what we eat and how we do it, the satisfaction that we give to our senses through it and the responsibility with which the products have been chosen is very much linked to that need to share and relate that transcends itself with the projection of eliminating hunger or malnutrition, and now more than ever all those lags that a situation like the one we are living now leaves.

Essential oils that prevent respiratory infections or natural remedies that help to reduce the symptoms of these, spices such as garlic and onion, fruits such as kiwi, berries or green vegetables - which with their high content of vitamin C and chlorophyll boost the immune system - are some of these strengths that, along with service and all those skills inherent in gastronomy, allow the food industry to contribute to the relief of this circumstance that has caused the COVID-19. 

The protagonists in this battle against what the new Coronavirus is causing and will continue to cause are also all those people who in some way have provided an excellent service with their work. We can also attest to this. 

All those who have been Excelencias Awards for 15 years, and specifically Excelencias Gourmet, have marked with their virtues, qualities and sense of social responsibility, a path that today becomes more necessary and demands new dispositions and new protocols, whether at the level of the room, management, creativity and innovation and now more than ever security.

Various initiatives are being taken to address these issues. Great chefs have made their work available to everyone through social networks in order to facilitate these confinement or preparation times; and at Excelencias Gourmet we also use these formats to conceive a space where managers, chefs, sommeliers, room managers, technology professionals, communicators and consultants come together to create what we have called #SeminarExcelenciasEnCasa, a preview of our next Excelencias Gourmet 2020 Seminar that will reach its tenth anniversary.