WINTER
2021
The Mediterranean diet, a way of life
The Mediterranean diet is both a nutritional model, a diet, and a lifestyle. Typical of the countries of the Mediterranean area, in addition to including specific food principles, it collects skills, knowledge, rituals, symbols, and traditions concerning cultivation, harvesting, fishing, breeding, conservation, cooking, and above all the communion and the consumption of food. Values such as hospitality, neighborhood, intercultural dialogue, sharing the table, are precisely the foundations of the cultural heritage that characterizes the Mediterranean diet that goes beyond food itself and enhances craftsmanship, local vocation, artistic manufactures with an eye to the respect of the territory and biodiversity.
Studied as a nutritional model since the 1950s, it still remains among the diets that, associated with healthy lifestyles, have a positive influence on our health. Thanks, in fact, to the richness of foods with low-calorie density (vegetables, fruit, cereals, and legumes), to the low content of mostly unsaturated fats, to a high intake of antioxidants (polyphenols in extra virgin olive oil and lycopene tomato), the Mediterranean diet plays an important role in the prevention of cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases and helps to maintain a healthy weight as well as to fight free radicals.
The perfect balance between humanistic and scientific culture has contributed to making the Mediterranean diet a model to respond to the challenges that the sustainable development goals of the UN Agenda 2030 and the new European Farm to Fork strategy for the reduction of the environmental impacts of agro-food place in front of us.
Credits to Unesco.it/PatrimonioImmateriale
