This cookbook is the result of a collaboration between nutrition consultant and researcher Gianluca Tognon, a senior lecturer and associate professor in public health at the University of Skövde and founder of The Food Scientist AB, and photographer Cornelia Schmidt.

Gianluca’s research focuses on the Mediterranean diet and interactions between diet and longevity, gut microbiome, obesity, and mental well-being. He has also worked as a consultant for startups and other organizations. Gianluca met Cornelia when he needed professional photographs for his business.

Cornelia has been working as a portrait and food photographer for the last 20 years. Their collaboration evolved when they began working together to create a personalized diet plan for Cornelia after she suffered a stroke. This life-altering event heightened Cornelia’s

interest in nutrition and led her to gradually adopt a vegan lifestyle. The concept for an Italian vegetarian cookbook emerged thanks to Gianluca’s upbringing in Northern Italy and Cornelia’s childhood in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, with a Sicilian heritage through her father.