Mediterranean Diet Rant #2

In the spirit of midterms week, and since I have my Mediterranean Diet midterm tomorrow, here's another rant.  There's one more important thing people don't eat here.  In fact, it's not easy to find in the grocery store.  Of all the meals I've cooked with people, or that I've seen cooked, I've never seen anyone use it.  Vegetable oils!  Like soybean oil, canola oil, corn oil, etc.  Here in Italy, they've never heard of these oils.  They use extra virgin olive oil and butter.  Mostly the olive oil, it's on everything.  No vegetable oil, and especially no margarine.  It's funny, in the United States the government recommendations tell us to eat less butter and animal fat and replace those with vegetable oils.  And that's exactly what we've done... since the 70's, Americans have eaten less "heart attack causing" saturated fats and eaten more "heart-healthy" vegetable oils.  Anybody know what's happened to heart disease rates??  Cancer??  Every other chronic disease there is?? Skyrocketing!  Okay, so that's a little off topic.  But the point is, Italians have never heard of vegetable oils.  So that's four things now that they do NOT eat... sugar, trans fats, fried food, vegetable oils.  Americans eat all of these things regularly. 

On the next Mediterranean Diet Rant, I'll explain why the Mediterranean diet is NOT the healthiest diet on earth.  Maybe.  Unless I feel like ranting on something else.  Buona notte!