Italian television excels in presenting documentaries and features that promote the excellence of Italian food, from pasta to olive oil and wine, from fresh fruit and vegetables to bistecca alla Fiorentina, insaccati and salami.
With undoubted artistic flair and savvy marketing techniques, the Italian media promote the industria agroalimentaria in the backdrop of the natural beauty of Italy’s countryside, historic centres and rich heritage.
Italians combine hyperbole, half-truths, myths and subliminal messages to claim that the Italian diet is the best and healthiest in the world.
Unfortunately, a clinical review of what lies behind the myth of the health benefits of the current Mediterranean diet will soon destroy the good feeling that one gets when eating a delicious plate of spaghetti carbonara, drinking expensive Barolo wine or snacking on salami and gorgonzola.
The term ‘Mediterranean diet’ was first used by the American physiologist Ancel Keys in the early 1950s. Keys conducted a diet research study in Nicotera, a town in Calabria. The cucina povera (peasant cooking) was not a choice for many poor Italians, especially those living in the south, struggling to put food on the table.
Keys found that the Nicotera residents consumed mainly local andorganic food using traditional recipes that relied on subsistence farming.
Italian politics is often chaotic, confrontational and thrives on the fragmentation of parties. Yet, one thing unites all Italian politicians: their love of excellent food and their unwavering belief in the merits of the Mediterranean diet, one of the most recognisable brands in the food industry. Italian politicians of the right, the centre and the left oppose any attempt by Brussels eurocrats to put spokes in the wheels of the Italian industria agroalimentaria.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is the most vociferous defender of the food industry and its substantial exports of Italian products to all parts of the world. In her recent meeting with US President Trump, it is reported that she highlighted the economic risks her country would face if the US imposed tariffs on Italian food exports.
Meloni subtly projects herself as an opponent of the EU liberal agenda promoting the overengineered Green Deal, which includes strict food labelling regulations to encourage healthier eating habits.
Italy, like Malta, Cyprus and Croatia, has one of the worst obesity childhood records in the EU. One-tenth of Italians drink alcohol every day, and salt overconsumption health costs are more than those of France, Spain and Greece combined, according to a recent report by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation.
Still, nutrition experts on TV health awareness programmes, like Elisir and Medicina33, extol the health benefits of consuming ‘in moderation’ Mediterranean diet staples like pasta, wine and salami.
Our obesity records hang like an albatross around our societal leaders’ necks
Admittedly, one nutritionist cautiously explained that a healthy plate of pasta should consist of 80 grams of dry pasta with plain tomato sauce, a spoonful of olive oil and a little garlic.
Unsurprisingly, most politicians put the narrow national interest before any other consideration when deciding on EU proposals on matters that affect people’s lives in the Union.
In 2010, UNESCO recognised the Mediterranean diet as an “intangible heritage of humanity”. Italy has exploited this move as it considered as a great commercial benefit that can help food industry exports.
Of course, the Mediterranean diet, as defined by Keys, does not have the same characteristics as current Mediterranean cuisine.
Michele Fino is a winegrower and professor of European law. He recently argued that Europeans’ heritage fever is rampant. Cheeses, cured meats, vegetable preserves, baked goods, pasta and wine are the moneymakers, creating more added value and netting more profit than the humble cereals, fruits and vegetables promoted by Keys.
Before waxing lyrical about the benefits of indulging in modern Mediterranean-style cuisine, consider the advice of medical experts who, unlike politicians, are not bound by export or GDP targets. The World Health Organisation, for instance, has classified alcohol as a carcinogen, for which there is no safe level of use. Processed meat got the same grade in 2015, with red meat listed as “probably carcinogenic”.
The sad reality is that in Mediterranean countries, supermarket shelves are stacked with unhealthy foods, including many overprocessed products that pose a long-term risk to the health of our children. Our obesity records hang like an albatross around our societal leaders’ necks.
One can only hope that the EU’s efforts to promote public health for all Europeans are not undermined by food industry lobbies, eurocrats obsessed with micromanaging regulations and politicians focused on perpetuating their careers.