The Mediterranean Diet

Spanish cuisine represents the Mediterranean diet, which is renowned for its health benefits and fresh ingredients. Its taste, diversity and quality make the Spanish cuisine the favourite choice both inside and outside our borders.

The Mediterranean diet, which is distinctive of the coastal regions surrounded by the Mediterranean, is considered to be one of the world’s healthiest diets. It focuses on fresh fruits, vegetables, legumes, plenty of seafood, very little meat, wine and olive oil as the principal fat, and it can be found it simple and tasty dishes like gazpacho (cold soup made of tomato), tortilla española (omelette filled with potatoes and onions), paella, and cured pork products, such as jamón Serrano.

The Varied Spanish Cuisine

Nevertheless, depite the popularity of the Mediterranean diet, the beauty of the Spanish cuisine comes from its variety and diversity. Spanish cuisine is heavily influenced by the waters that surround the country, its climate and demographic, making the Mediterranean diet the most representative, but not the only one.

Thus, these are other diets that can be found in Spain:

- Inner Spain, which comprises the Autonomous Communities located in the centre of the Peninsula (Castillas, Madrid, Extremadura). Its cuisine is characterised by hot, thick soups such as the bread and garlic-based Castilian soup, along with substantious stews such as cocido madrileño. Food is traditionally conserved by salting, like Spanish ham, or immersed in olive oil, like Manchego cheese.

- Atlantic Spain, which includes the whole Northern coast (Asturias, Basque Country, Cantabria and Galicia): vegetable and fish-based stews like pote gallego and marmitako. Also, the lightly cured lacón ham. The most known North countries cuisine often rely on the captures from close or distant seas, like the Basque-style cod, albacore or anchovy or the Galician octopus.

But if we are to mention some of the most popular and recognised Spanish food abroad, those are:
olive oil, jamón Ibérico and cold meat (chorizo, salchichón, …).
And the star beverage: wine.
 

Denominación de Origen, the Caring for Quality
 

The guarantee of quality is a must in the Spanish cuisine.  In March 1996, the Spanish government unveiled a serial of quality classifications of which Denominación de Origen (DO) is the recognition of superior quality.

These Denominaciones de Origen includes most of the Spanish foodstuffs such as wine, olive oil, cheese, jamón… And they ensure that only products genuinely originating in that region are allowed to be identified as such in commerce, as a way to eliminate the unfair competition and misleading of consumers by non-genuine products, which may be of inferior quality or of different flavour.