Access world-class experts from the top universities, agencies, and restaurants in the world for classes and mentoring tailored to your needs.

Education ad hoc

We offer tailored lectures and workshops with world-leading experts to promote critical thinking and empower future food practitioners, culinary students, or curious minds to create sustainable solutions for today’s key pressing challenges using interdisciplinary and systemic approaches.

HORECA

Mycelium wants to help empower a new mindset that fuels new narratives in the restaurant space, by providing a set of ad-hoc and hands-on training to inspire new ways of thinking and operating in the restaurant industry.

Food Industry

Mycelium aims to provide different training, workshops, and experiences for companies that want to lead the discussion and perform at their best, and spend one day from their hectic schedules to stop, think and reflect.

Academia

We aim to redefine how food education is structured and create new spaces to inspire and prepare future change-makers, promoting reflection about the boundaries of knowledge creation and sharing.

Mentorship

We also offer mentorships to connect you with relevant experts in the field to offer feedback. We want to help you reflect on current projects and practices and discuss theoretical and practical issues. We want to offer you support and guidance.

E-Learning

Demystifying the food industry

  • With the advent of the industrial revolution, the world’s diet has dramatically shifted towards higher intakes of processed foods. Large scale directly related to food prices and the urbanization of rural areas are key underlying factors. However, there is a general concern about this moving away from nature and more people believe that poor health is directly related to chemicals and processed foods. In this scenario, there is a current trend from companies to become more “eco-friendly” which leads to greenwashing.

    In this course, we will begin with a quick overview of the idea of technology in the food system from a historic perspective to understand the evolution of the food industry. Then we will touch on some basic terms such as the definition of clean label, chemical additive, or novel food. We will also cover the regulations that an additive needs to pass to be used in the food industry and the correlation between the number of ingredients and the product’s quality or safety. Lastly, we will discuss corporate greenwashing, and the use of storytelling and brand image of companies to, for example, use Michelin-star chefs as ambassadors of fast food and processed foods.

    This course is designed for students and professionals working in the food industry interested in the underlying issues of these current trends toward a more eco-friendly and sustainable industry.

  • John Hutt
    Ricard Astolfi
    Constanza Díaz del Castillo Velásquez

  • The course is free, and the content will be available in March 2023.

Gastro Tourism: Balancing Economic Value with Sustainability

  • Gastronomy tourism presents an opportunity to upgrade the tourist experience and create connections with local communities. Gastro tourism is increasingly becoming the core of local and regional travel and many destinations are using their cuisine as a key product to engage new visitors. Travelers are seeking more meaningful experiences with local cultures through food. Gastro-tourism represents a very relevant sector for the tourist industry and it is key to understanding what are the main implications of this recent trend on local communities. Food tourism can be beneficial to empower local economies but there are important downsides to food tourism that can destroy its cultural heritage.

    In this course, we will explore how gastro-tourism can help promote sustainable social development and explore the best ways to create value for communities. We will deep-dive into perspectives from practitioners in the field from Colombia to Thailand to see what are the best practices in the destination. We will discuss how stakeholders can create a profitable and sustainable environment for these initiatives to thrive. And we will explore the main drawbacks of over-tourism for local communities from a global perspective.

    This course is designed for students and professionals working in the food industry or Culinary Students interested in how gastro-tourism can promote sustainable development and use food as a vehicle to create opportunities in the destination.

  • Francisca Hector
    Fernando Peñuela Rubio
    Dharat Hoochlamong
    Dinç Yıldız

  • The course is free, and the content will be available in March 2023.

Gastronomy and gender

  • Food, in many cultures, has been a female space in the domestic realm, but a male domain in the professional realm. Gender discrimination reflects social codes and norms that dictate how people interact with others. Gender inequalities are linked to politics, culture, and history and it has affected women's freedoms and capabilities. Food is culture, and gender is a cultural construction. Regarding hospitality, despite their high representation in the global workforce (51% in Spain), there is an unequal distribution of tasks and decision-making positions. Women usually engage in manual and non-mechanized work and, in general, less qualified tasks, lower status and most servile roles whereas men tend to take leadership roles and managerial positions.

    The main barriers to gender discrimination in hospitality, especially in haute cuisine, are related to dominant male values and traits, in part, due to its military origin. Elite women chefs are required to demonstrate physical and mental strength to follow the work culture of working long hours and avoiding emotional displays. Studies have shown that male traits are more related to leadership requirements. Therefore, cooking is seen as a gendered task, especially in domestic and professional spheres.

    In this course, we will explore the causes and consequences of gender discrimination in the food industry. We will deep dive into leadership stereotypes and we will focus on what we can do to create a more inclusive space.

  • Patricia Jurado
    Claudia Polo
    Sandra Lozano
    Francisca Hector
    Ghalib Acosta
    Raquel Mestre

  • The course is free, and the content will be available in March 2023.

Understanding the future of alternative proteins

  • Climate change, ecological collapse, and the increasing demand for animal protein have led to the urgent need for new alternative proteins.

    In this course, we will start reflecting what are the social and environmental implications of meat consumption and how its way of production is related to the centralization of power, which leads to highly linear and wasteful system structures.

    In the second part of the course, we will try to clarify what we mean by “alternative”, and we will go through the different methods to produce alternative proteins: plant-based proteins, precision fermentation, cultured meat, and insects. We will deep dive into how mycelium and fungi can be sources of alternative proteins, and how their unique biochemistry makes them suitable as a meat alternative. We will also talk about the role of microbes and fermentations in the production of these alternatives.

    In the last part of the course, we will talk about New Foods derived from new technologies and we will finish the course by evaluating the limitations and implications of these meat alternatives.

    Therefore, this course will cover the current issues regarding meat consumption and centralization of power, the main pillars of alternative proteins from a scientific and cultural perspective, including their pros and cons, and lastly, it will include a discussion of the New Foods as overly technological solutions.

    This course is designed for professionals and students working or interested in the food system, with no need for basic knowledge about food science.

  • Tiffany Mak
    Bryan Q. Le, Ph.D.
    Maria Real Tolosa
    Nabila Rodriguez

  • The course is free, and the content will be available in March 2023.

Sustainability thinking in restaurants

  • Most of the time when we consider sustainability in restaurants, the conversation is dominated by the topics of food waste & sustainable materials, often failing to view and recognize the broader structures that are the root cause of these issues.

    In this training we will offer an introduction to a systemic and multidisciplinary approach to sustainability with food and beverage as the main medium. The training focuses on essential topics and areas of sustainability both in theory and practice to be applied within the HORECA.

    We will explore sustainability in the contemporary world and how we as people who work in hospitality and HORECA can continuously improve our practices for both people and the environment.

  • Dharath Hoonchamlong
    Constanza Díaz del Castillo Velásquez
    Estefania Simon-Sasyk
    Selena Calleri
    Clara Pallares
    Daniella Illerbrand

  • The course is free, and the content will be available in March 2023.

Food futures

  • How can we create meaningful narratives that spark change?

    Food security and sustainability of our food system are major challenges highlighted in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The increase in productivity of our food system has come with social and environmental costs: water scarcity, ecosystem stress, biodiversity loss, high levels of greenhouse emissions, and soil degradation. We are currently compromising the future fertility of the planet. On the other hand, 815 million people are hungry, partly because of climate change, limited access to land and resources, conflict, and disasters. Overcoming the most pressing challenges requires implementing national and global development strategies based on collective knowledge, evidence, and experience.

    Foresight can enable transformative decision-making by identifying plausible futures leveraging collective intelligence through participatory futures, interpreting climate data, and using our imagination to chart pathways.

    In this course, you will learn the complexity of our food system, the multi-factorial issues, key trends, and how foresight and future thinking can help us make better decisions.

    This course is designed for food practitioners, chefs, culinary students, researchers, and consultants interested in understanding how they can contribute to creating a more sustainable food system by using foresight techniques.

  • Estefania Simon Sasyk
    Daniel Riveong
    John A. Sweeney
    Luke Tay
    Leah Jones Crank

  • The course is free, and the content will be available in March 2023.

Nutre tu embarazo

  • Nourishment when expecting - is a multidisciplinary culinary program dedicated to people who are expecting a baby or are in the preconception stage.

    In this online course, midwives, nutritionists, and chefs seek to empower people in the kitchen with a focus on healthy habits, backed by up-to-date scientific evidence.

  • Mónica Sahmkow (Chef and gastronomic consultant)
    Elena Pajuelo Vázquez (Midwife and health educator)
    Patricia Jurado (Chef, scientist and gastronomic consultant)
    Estefania Simon-Sasyk (Founder of Mycelium, chef and gastronomic consultant)

  • Spanish