#MediterraneanDietOfLife

The Mediterranean Diet is the only one that makes us live healthy and longer due to its focus on prevention. It is a “diet” meaning something more that got lost over time: a rule of conduct that does not have only to do with food.
The road to psychophysical well-being was traced centuries ago and it is linked to a healthy lifestyle. Around the table, and more generally in our life, we can allow ourselves everything, always provided the right measure and that we have the most active lifestyle.

The “Mediterranean diet of life” means to take care about ourselves even when we are not around a table: doing sport should not be considered as one of our many daily duties but rather as the dynamic part of our life that provides us with natural anti-depressants like dopamine, serotonin (the “happy hormone” contained in many Mediterranean diet dishes) and endorphins. In a virtuous circle, the Mediterranean Diet is the best for sport, according to sport medicine and food experts.

According to the US News & World Report, the Mediterranean Diet is “the best in the world and luckily it is in very good health”. It only needs to be aroused and encouraged by better understanding it: history teaches us that the Mediterranean model has never been a closed one and, over the centuries, it allowed the inclusion of products that turned into its main characters, like dried pasta, “invented” by the Arabs in Sicily and then spread all over the country…and the world. Today, like 50 years ago, a Mediterranean diet of life means to be curious about food and to eat healthy, without prejudices or ideologies.

Without the food industry, the Mediterranean diet of life would be exclusively limited to a small area in Southern Italy and everybody would only eat the typical food of their own region: no oranges, olive oil and pasta in Northern Countries and no rice or butter in Southern Countries, just to make an example. More and more companies provide people with the necessary food to eat Mediterranean, according to the seasons and by guaranteeing an accessible, varied and quality diet. Moreover, the innovation of production processes and ingredients allows to create more and more balanced recipes being consistent with nutrition claims and more and more “ethical” – i.e., sustainable and short chain – to provide products that respect the land and crop diversity and support local communities.

Proper nutrition must not exclude any type of food, but also the time of day when we eat is important. A “Mediterranean diet of life” means to eat with curiosity: to combine different food, to re-discover forgotten products and cuts or try new ones. However, it is important not to leave out chrono-nutrition, which teaches us to sleep and eat at specific times and to concentrate the food intake in the moments when we are active the most: a rich breakfast, a lunch adjusted to our amount of physical activity and a lighter dinner to eat 1 or 2 hours before going to bed.

The attack on carbs, which should make up 55-60% of the calories in the Mediterranean Diet is a clear example of the nutrition drift into “punishments”, an example of a diet becoming a “mean” rather than a “way”, an example of food being prescribed as a drug. This is done without considering that some cells (red blood, brain and muscular cells in particular) absolutely need carbohydrates and our body reacts to the absence of this nutrient by means of the classic symptoms of hypoglycemia and fasting: weakness, perspiration, lack of concentration and attention, drowsiness, headache and blurred vision.
Whole meal pasta with vegetables and legumes is a centuries-old “Mediterranean Diet concentration”. Today, we can even count on different shades of taste and color: whole meal, other diverse meals, gluten-free…that make the Mediterranean diet of life something for every taste or nutritional need.

Moderation and frugality. The Mediterranean diet of life means to follow nature cycles by eating seasonal products, to give back dignity to what we eat by enhancing the value of leftovers and by chewing longer. Researchers from Birmingham University showed that chewing long and slowly “fixes” the memory of food in our brain and reduces hunger in the hours following the main meals. Moreover, just to mention moderation, we should deeply understand the concept of portion: it is false that pasta makes gain weight if we eat 80-100 gr with the right amount of seasoning.

The Mediterranean Diet is the best choice also for the health of our planet. Even if it includes many types of food, it is mainly vegetable-based and it boosts the daily intake of fruits, vegetables, cereals and legumes, whose production has a low impact on the environment. For instance, the environmental print of a dish of pasta with tomatoes is just 0.492 kg. and its water footprint is just 231.4 lt. (WWF).
Today, as in the past, the Mediterranean diet of life means to be in harmony with the Earth, to be conscious about how food is selected, produced and distributed, to make choices guided by seasons and by the harmony with our body and with the planet.
Just as our grandparents did, but more globally oriented.

Conviviality, the pleasure of being together, a meal shared with our beloved ones are some pivotal elements of the Mediterranean diet of life which we maybe missed the most during quarantine and which we look forward to taking back. Whenever possible people are happy to re-discover the value and the meaning of true conviviality. The proof is that during the first quarantine weeks we used food to re-discover old rituals and even cooking our grandma’s recipe, together or at a distance, was a sign of a centuries-old culture. To quote Plutarch, we do not sit around a table to eat and drink, but to eat and drink together.

The “Mediterranean diet of life” means to be conscious about food, where it comes from, how it is produced, its history, how it can be cooked and stored with an objective and lay approach and without prejudices about it, its production, its origin and its safety. In the era of the fight between misinformation and debunking, trying to verify the information telling us what to eat is an act of awareness against the tide to take control of our own and our beloved ones’ well-being and not to fall into the trap of fake news. Indeed, behind them there are often prejudices or interests and, most of all, misinformation and refusal of scientific truths.