Mediterranean Diet Rant #1

So it's 11:53 and for whatever reason, my mind is racing and I can't fall asleep, despite the fact that I've been up at 6 every day this week to work at the vineyard.  More on wine week tomorrow... but I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about this so-called Mediterranean diet and the fact that everyone here is thinner and tends to avoid chronic disease more than Americans.  Why is this?  Well, a few key factors have come to my attention since I've been here.

Firstly, and in my opinion most importantly, it is what Italians do NOT eat.  It just so happens that the things they don't eat are my big three to avoid:  sugar, trans fat, and fried food.  Americans consume wayyy too much sugar, and much of it today is in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, which may be even worse.  Italians do not consume nearly as much sugar.  Sure, they typically eat a pastry for breakfast, and they'll put sugar in their coffee, but that is about it.  I very rarely see anyone here drinking soda, let alone a 20 oz. bottle of the stuff.  Actually, the only containers I've seen soda in are cans smaller than the ones back home.  Trans-fat is virtually non-existent here.  I'm pretty sure it's banned from use.  The very idea of using hydrogenated oils like Crisco is completely contradictory to the Italian tradition of using fresh, local food.  And fried foods; I've seen a little fried food here, like fried chicken cutlets for example, but they are also very rare.  In fact, they don't really have much refined oil here, like soybean oil, corn oil, canola oil (vegetable oils).  Extra virgin olive oil is used on everything, but it is not suitable for frying, both because it can't withstand typical frying temperatures and because it's too costly.

The Mediterranean diet certainly isn't a perfect diet by any means, but if all you do is remove these three items from your diet, you can eat just about anything else you want and still be decently healthy.  What do these three things have in common?  They are all industrial food products.  None of these exist in nature.  Not coincidentally, all three will accelerate your death. 

More on the Mediterranean diet later... this is just the tip of the iceberg.