Novigrad teaches you how to eat healthy

Many visitors fall in love with Novigrad thanks to its exceptional gastronomic scene. This means enjoying delicious food while eating healthily, as the menu here mainly consists of fish and other marine organisms, which are well-known as the foundation of a healthy Mediterranean diet. On the other hand, the tradition of preparing such food in households has been gradually fading over the decades due to various global trends and socio-economic influences. However, this is not unique to this picturesque fishing town.

Thanks to European funding and a project with an impressive name, CHE FINO – Choose Health and Eat Fish in Novigrad, this spring, as many as 20 workshops were held for children from Novigrad's kindergartens and schools. Depending on their age, children were offered an informative, creative, and entertaining program. Their sea-themed artworks were exhibited during the Park Food Fest in May 2023.

In order for children, as well as their parents, to have something delicious prepared from sea ingredients on their plates for lunch more often, it is necessary to create a habit and be engaged and creative in the kitchen when preparing food. Therefore, free educational cooking workshops were organized for the public and professional chefs from educational institutions and catering establishments. These workshops teach new and simple recipes that debunk the myth that it is difficult to prepare a quick, hearty, and tasty meal based on protein from the Adriatic Sea.

Here's how these commendable activities were realized! Listening to the needs of the local community, the Local action group in fisheries FLAG "Pinna nobilis," in collaboration with the Fisheries administration of the Ministry of agriculture, issued a call for proposals in 2020 with the aim of using non-refundable funds from the European maritime and fisheries fund. They were looking for projects that would promote increased consumption of fish and other marine organisms in the northwestern Istria region, on the condition that the activities also included the education of children who need to adopt healthy dietary habits from an early age. The Novigrad – Cittanova Tourist Board, in partnership with the Novigrad city library, recognized the potential and importance of the project and that, alongside popularizing good and simple recipes, they could also influence the local community and the destination's tourist image.

In addition to these workshops, as part of the CHE FINO project, educational culinary video recipes were created, and a recipe book was published. For more information, check the articles on this website!