IEEE Spectrum September, 2016 - 24

NUmBerS DoN't Lie_By VAcLAV SmiL

opiNioN

Addio to the
Mediterranean diet
The BenefiTs of The MediTerranean dieT became widely
known after 1970, when Ancel Keys published the first installment
in his long-term study of nutrition and health in Italy, Greece, and
five other countries and found that the diet was associated with a
low incidence of heart disease.
The key traits of the diet are a high intake
of carbohydrates (mostly bread, pasta, and rice) complemented by pulses
(beans, peas, chickpeas) and nuts, dairy products (mostly cheese and yogurt),
fruits and vegetables, seafood, and lightly processed seasonal foods, generally
cooked with olive oil. It included much more modest quantities of sugar and of
meat. Best of all, plenty of wine was taken with the food.
Not all of the early
conclusions have withstood the test of time. But today it is clear that it reduces
the risk of cardiovascular problems, cuts the risk of certain cancers by about
10 percent, and offers some protection against type 2 diabetes. There is little
doubt that if Western countries, particularly the United States, had followed
it en masse they'd never have reached the levels of obesity now prevalent. In
2013, UNESCO inscribed the diet on the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of
Humanity, with Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, and Spain as
the designated countries. Yet even in those havens of health there is a growing problem: The true Mediterranean diet is now eaten only in certain isolated
coastal or mountainous outposts. The dietary transition has been rapid and farreaching, particularly in the two most populous countries of the region, Italy
and Spain.
During the past 50 years, the Italian diet has become more Mediterranean only for fruit, the consumption of which went up by nearly 50 percent.
Meanwhile, consumption of animal fats and meat trebled. Olive oil now supplies

Sep 2016

North AmericAN

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less than half of all dietary fats and-
incredibile!-the consumption of pasta
is down and that of wine is way down,
for a drop of about 75 percent. Italians
now buy almost as much beer as rosso
and bianco.
The Spanish retreat from the Mediterranean diet has been even faster and
even more complete. Spaniards still like
their seafood, the consumption of which
has increased, but they've moved away
from grains, vegetables, and legumes.
Olive oil now provides less than half of
all the country's fats.
And, remarkably, Spaniards on average
now drink only around 20 liters of wine
per year-which is less than half the beer
they consume. That's comparable to what
you see in Germany and the Netherlands!
Could there be a more potent symbol
of the diet's demise than tinto beaten
by cerveza? And even most Europeans
(keeping old dietary patterns in their
memory) are unaware that the Spanish
per capita meat supply, only at about
20 kilograms a year when Franco died,
is now, at nearly 100 kg, well ahead of
such traditionally carnivorous nations
as Germany, France, and Denmark.
And the prospects are not good. A
new pattern of eating has become the
norm among the young people, who also
buy less fresh food than their parents
did. Spain, for example, has no shortage of McDonald's, KFCs, Taco Bells,
and Dunkin' Donuts-or Dunkin' Coffee,
as it's called there. The global reach of
meaty, fatty, salty, and sugary fast food
is doing away not just with an ancient
culinary heritage but with one of the
few advantages the ancient world had
over the modern one.
Reasons for this shift have been universal. Higher incomes allow higher
meat, fat, and sugar intakes. Traditional families have been replaced by
two-income and single-person households that cook less at home and buy
more ready-to-eat meals. And busier
lifestyles promote snacking and convenience food. n
illustration by

Chad Hagen

http://SpectrUm.ieee.orG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum September, 2016