Healthy Southern Italians turning to fast food

State media claims residents are rejecting the Mediterranean diet for fast food, which is making them obese, sparks war of words

Italy’s state broadcaster has sparked an outcry in Southern Italy by claiming that the region that introduced the world to the Mediterranean diet is piling on the pounds after turning its back on healthy eating In an advert, the RAI network claimed the famous diet rich in fruit, fish, vegetables and olive oil now “hardly exists” in the region where it was born, as the consumption of “throwaway food” soars.

As a result, one in two residents of the Campania region around Naples are overweight, and one in 10 is obese, claimed the advert, 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 advert asks. That was enough to prompt a furious demand for damages from Stefano Pisani, mayor of Pollica, a small town in the Cilento area of Campania, who called the advert “shameful” and said he had received hasty guarantees from Italy’s agriculture minister that the ad would be pulled.

The diet, which is common to other Mediterreanean countries including Greece and Spain, was first studied in the 1950s by US scientist Ancel Keys who moved to Cilento. In the UK it was publicised by cookery writer Elizabeth David. Italians have long outlived fellow Europeans thanks to their healthy consumption of fruit and vegetables, and 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 Italian farmer’s lobby group Coldiretti warning that daily calorie intake around the Mediterranean leaped by 30 percent between 1962 and 2002.

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