Italian outrage at ‘junk diet’ claim

Rome: The state broadcaster has caused an outcry in southern Italy by claiming that the region that introduced the world to the Mediterranean diet is now obsessed with junk food and becoming obese as a result.

In an advertisement, the RAI network claims that the traditional diet rich in fruit, fish, vegetables and olive oil now “hardly exists” in the region where it originated, as the consumption of “throwaway food” rises. One in two residents of the Campania region around Naples is overweight, and one in 10 is obese, alleges the advertisement, which was aired to promote Italy’s hosting of the World Expo in 2015, which uses healthy food as its theme.

“When will the Mediterranean diet come home?” the advertisement asks. It was enough to prompt a demand for damages from Stefano Pisani, the mayor of Pollica, a small town in the Cilento area of Campania, who called the advertisement “shameful” and said he had received hasty guarantees from Italy’s agriculture minister that it would not be show again.

The local diet, which is common to other Mediterranean countries including Greece and Spain, was first studied in the 1950s by the US scientist Ancel Keys, who moved to Cilento. In the UK it was publicised by the cookery writer Elizabeth David.

Italians have long outlived fellow Europeans thanks to their healthy consumption of fruit and vegetables. The diet, which reduces cancers and heart disease, was added in 2010 to Unesco’s world heritage list.

But Italians have recently fallen into bad habits, with the Italian farmer’s lobby group Coldiretti warning that daily calorie intake around the Mediterranean leapt by 30 per cent between 1962 and 2002.

“The reduction in the eating of fruit after meals and as a snack has been key,” said Rolando Manfredini, a food safety officer at Coldiretti. But Mr Pisani said that in Cilento, “the true home of the diet”, locals were still eating well. “The advertisement,” he said, “is an offence to the dignity of our people.”