Rita Geraldes

Location: Portugal

Profession: Social Worker

About

I have been learning a lot about sourdough making. This started when I got a burnout and it was like a great new discovery for me as it turned out as a therapy: creating, feeding my starter everyday and baking delicious and healthy breads for my family (husband and three little girls)!
During this process, when I was forced to stop for a few months, I invested in knowledge to really jnow more about the bread science, the nutrition side, and it was surprising for me that my anxiety, bloating, bad nights of sleep, etc, were all realated with the way I ate. My uncle, who are a functional nutritionist helped me a lot along the way and brought to me this new world of food as medicine that I'm going deep through bread, mainly. I really love doing this, it has become a central part of me. Hopefully I can manage the launch of my own brand of artesanal bakery with a gut health differentiator to persuit this great purpose!

My Work

I'm based in Lisbon, Portugal. As I told before, I'm a marketing profisional with almost 15 years of experience. I always had a lot of contact with the countryside (we have a little farm in the south region of Portugal, Alentejo) and the contact with the land is very important to me. Recently, because of my subit burnout (caused by high levels of stress at work and bad nights of sleep) I started to learn about bread and all its relations with mental health, as a therapy to me but mostly as a new path that I really want to persuit. I would love to but my innovation and marketing skills, alongside with my personal essence, to the launch of a project that I really believe could have the power to do goof things to our community and people around. An artisanal bakery, with a gut health differentiator, an inspiration tht I learnt with Happy Tummy (Ireland). This project has been "in the oven" and I have been investing in knowing more, going deep in the science, baking a lot to learn how to tho things better, so we can finnaly launch it by the end of this year. And hopefully, I change my life for the next 20 years :)

Passionate about Baking as Lifestyle Medicine

It is preatty much what I wrote in the last answer! It is tottaly related with a personal problem that I had in the last year - burnout, but also bloating and anxiety, that I started with functional nutrition therapy (actually with my uncle) and the idea that everything is really connected and the way we eat contributes a lot to our overall mood and anxiety levels. Besides this, that started with a problem that I faced, I have been discovering a whole new pasion with is doing things with hands, mixing the flours. these are hours that my head just stops thinking, only puting all my efforts and pasion to do a beautiful and flavourful bread to my kids!

My Community

In Lisbon, there have been opening a lot of sourdough bakeries, which is great because we know have more offer in more nutrition breads, but I think it is still missing the narrative and the reason why of these breads. Why are they better? What they help in our gut health? And also, I think is missing a bakery that could combine the best breads with a group of pastries, cookings, food that are particulary designed for a better gut health. Also, this idea has also a non profit pillar that would work as workshops that we would provide to young kids to sensibilize the importance of good nutrition to a happier and balanced life!

How I use BALM Protocol

To make better and more nutrition breads to my family (my kids essentially) and share this great knoledge with them, but also for my personal project to launch the bakery and be able to talk with more knowledge with my future staff of bakers :) It is important to know how to do things, even if I'm not in the front line, but have this sensibility to the way things are done!