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Too much bread in ‘healthy’ Italian diet is making children obese

Too much bread in ‘healthy’ Italian diet is making children obese

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...obese-m9rtmvrgt

Quote:

It is credited with giving Italians longevity and a healthy complexion but they are now eating only the bits of the world-famous Mediterranean diet they like, resulting in soaring child obesity, a leading nutritionist has claimed.

Despite developing the healthy diet rich in vegetables, good olive oil, beans and fish, Italy is now raising a generation of overweight children, with obesity rates for six to nine-year-olds hitting 21 per cent for boys and 14 per cent for girls, among the highest in Europe.

The arrival of junk food in the Bel paese is often blamed, but an Italian expert said that was not the problem.

“Italian children eat little junk food and are given about one can of fizzy drink a week,” Valter Longo said. Instead he discovered children were being given far too much pasta.

“They are eating 500 to 600 grams of starch-rich food, meaning pasta, bread and potatoes, a day. A massive amount of starch that turns to fat,” said Professor Longo, 53, of the University of Southern California and the IFOM cancer research centre in Milan.

He added: “Around 60 per cent of Italian parents of overweight children are unaware their children have a weight problem, partly because they think they are giving them the right food. The Mediterranean diet can be damaging if you are convinced you are sticking to it but you are not.”

Italians need to limit the pasta and increase the beans and vegetables that are also part of the diet, he said. “Italian centenarians tell me that pasta was once expensive but beans were not. The ideal meal contains 70g of pasta, 150g of vegetables and 300g of beans, whether lentils, peas or chickpeas,” he said.

In Perdasdefogu, Sardinia, where people regularly live beyond 100, minestrone soup is a staple, while large amounts of rosemary in Acciaroli, south of Naples, have been linked to the numerous centenarians there.

Too much meat creeping into the diet of children is also a danger, Professor Longo said. “Kids get 70g at school and another 70g with their evening meal, twice the recommended amount of animal-based protein, which increases the risk of cancer,” he said.

Lorenzo Bazzana, an expert with Coldiretti, the Italian farmers’ lobby group, said that too many vegetables were being forgotten. “We have an abundance of vegetables, from artichokes to cavolo nero and types of cabbage which Italians increasingly find are too time-consuming and complicated to cook, and they don’t like the odour they create,” he said.

I prefer to eat the types of food that humans evolved while eating. I have meat for three meals a day.

I think Longo's one of the good guys, in that he would improve most people's diets if they paid attention to him. Of course by "most people" I mean Homer Simpson. But, still.

Quote:

Originally Posted by teaser

Of course by "most people" I mean Homer Simpson. But, still.

I'm middle of the road on Longo, and that's just strictly due to his recommendations as they apply to me. Homer would definitely benefit by following Longo's advice.

The story about Italian children being overweight applies to almost every country today due to diets with a carbohydrate imbalance. Anointing the undefined but exotically labeled Mediterranean diet as the nutritional answer for the world's health issues is so wrong in many ways. I can eat foods that are very unhealthy for me and still call it a Mediterranean diet.

One last thought and question: Why is there no group like Peta who find people following a pescatarian diet morally and ethically objectionable? Is it because fish are not mammals and harder for people to interpret as sentient beings?

Peta's definitely against eating fish. Baby fish just aren't cute and fluffy, so they don't make the posters.

Once you get to crickets and shrimp--I think a related argument could be made, if I was going to feel guilty for eating a bunny, I don't think that should automatically make me feel guilty about eating bugs. But even there--if the bunny lived a good life, and then I ate it, is that worse than the bunny never being born? Ethics of how livestock should be treated aren't the same as ethics of whether they should exist.

Years ago I remember somebody writing something about somehow segregating carnivores from herbivores in the wild. Not only would some of the carnivores start eating each other--but many herbivores are opportunistic carnivores. With lots of lions about, baboons might be mostly plant eaters, but with less lions in the area, they move in and fill that niche.

As a mom of two teens, the key to eating is prevent obesity in the first place. Most of us on this forum have a neat-centric diet because of a current or past obesity issue.

My teens can eat meats, veg, eggs and veg and fruit with some bread. Some potatoes, some beans, little pasta.

Pasta is so cheap here in the US it's the #1item at food pantries. Pasta is a lazy man's meal.

I cook, my boys cook. Cabbage is quick to prepare in stir fry, and not stinky......

It's is about conscious choices. I didn't want my kids to fight obesity their whole life, so cooking and meats/veg/fruits are a high priority.