Healthy Gelato: wellbeing beyond taste

“I come from a family that has specialised in the dairy sector for three generations. That allowed me to see, and to take an active part in, the processes of producing, transforming, preserving and distributing milk.” Towards the end of the 1970s, alongside his main business, Arnaldo Conforto began keeping bees. Passion and curiosity would lead him to experiment with everything that wonderful world has to offer. In 1990 the opportunity arose to open a café and gelato shop, and he devoted himself to it completely. He bought everything the literature of the day had to offer on the subject, and found his bible: “Scienza e Tecnologia del gelato artigianale” by Luca Caviezel. In 1997 he asked his son Flavio to transfer Luca Caviezel's recipe-formulation scheme into a spreadsheet. So Gerigel was born, software for formulating and managing recipes, which together with Caviezel's book would later become teaching material at the Scuola Italiana di Gelateria. “Experimenting and sharing led me to meet colleagues and masters. Giuseppe Lancerini proposed that I join the Accademia della Gelateria Italiana. In 1998 I became a full member.” Slowly the need to found a school for the sector took shape. In 2007, with other colleagues, he took part in founding the association “I maestri della Gelateria Italiana” and subsequently in setting up the Scuola Italiana di Gelateria, based in Perugia. He taught there for the whole of the school's active life. In 2012 he obtained the professional qualification of Specialised Master Gelato Maker awarded by the Umbria Region, and the qualification of Judge “Level I Sensory Analysis”. In 2010, with his children, he founded the company Artigiani del gusto. He still works in training and consultancy for colleagues and for new businesses. When A' Nivarata, the Sicilian granita festival, was born in Acireale, he accepted the coordination and production of the laboratory, assisted by Ruben Pili, with whom he would work until it closed. “I remember with great affection my friend and colleague Giorgio De Pellegrin, who the day after the first edition of Sherbeth said to me: Arnaldo, this is the finest artisanal gelato event I have ever seen; we must be there and support these two ‘visionaries’. After some time Antonio Cappadonia invited me to help Giorgio run the Sherbeth laboratory. That is how my unbroken path as head of the Sherbeth laboratory began.”

A freelance journalist, she spent half her life between Milan and Rome before returning to Turin, where her suitcase is always packed. She writes about food and travel to discover and tell stories, works as a food critic and has a background in marketing and communication. She loves cooking, pizza, gelato, cocktails, the sea, the woods, the rain, going to the cinema alone and laughing out loud. She adores change and transformation — to feel alive.