All the Mediterranean peoples point out that their diet not only differs from country to country but also constantly changes. Imagine Mediterranean food without tomatoes, beans, potatoes, or peppers – imports from South America – or rice, aubergines, and lemons from the East. Maybe the word “Mediterranean” is a misnomer – but nobody suggests relinquishing it.
The Mediterranean Diet’s answer to all this has been to begin calling itself the traditional Mediterranean Diet. The debate shows signs of breaking up into factional confrontations. Health groups point out that it’s not the foods as such but the chemistry and the proportions that count. But is it not pleasure that is the lure of the Pyramid? Many now say that people should just eat what they like, provided they have enough exercise; that health is never only a question of what foods you eat. Has the Diet fixated us on foodstuffs – things you can buy – while not making enough of the Mediterranean lifestyle in general? The Diet Pyramid has accordingly gained a new bottom layer: exercise. But “exercise” itself has now come to seem inconceivable without buying things, and it cannot sum up a way of life.
Meanwhile, the Mediterraneans themselves are becoming fatter; obesity in children is growing alarmingly in Greece, Italy, and Spain. In this year’s Alimentaria vast floorspace was given to olive oil and to wine, but there was also a truly enormous pink-carpeted hall crammed with cookies and candy. In Catalonian supermarket aisles potato chips, ready dips, and snacks are the third-fastest-growing category of food items. Processed and convenience foods (nasty, expensive, and quick) and “functional” foods (supplements added) predict for themselves a gigantic future in the Mediterranean region. Sales of boxed fruit juices (in Spain!) have doubled this year because people prefer inferior taste to squeezing an orange. Perhaps, galling though it might be, Mediterraneans should now themselves adopt the Mediterranean Diet, again following America’s example?
Other Diets are being elaborated, in imitation of the envied Mediterranean model. The Atlantic Diet in Spain, for instance, is that of the Basque-to-Galician coasts where, according to gourmet standards, the best cuisine in Spain is to be found. The Atlantic Diet, however, cannot conceivably recommend itself to slimmers.
What no one foresaw was the arrival of a new pyramid – an upside-down one, teetering on its tip: the Atkins Diet. Eat masses of proteins (e.g., meat and eggs), we are told, cut out carbohydrates, and lose weight. The Atkins name has become a valuable commodity, but the diet itself is a very old idea. It was once known in England as “banting,” after Mr. William Banting, an undertaker, who publicized an already traditional practice in his pamphlet, Letter on Corpulence (1864).
The Atkins Diet is hardly heard of in Spain yet. One feels that Spaniards, if they only knew, would embrace it fervently – the meaty, eggy part anyway. The French seem not to have heard of it much either, although their buttery, meatcentred cuisine, demoted by the Mediterranean Pyramid, stands to return to favour should the Atkins fad last. It is almost impossible to “bant” in Italy. I was standing in line at the “innovations” section of the Alimentaria, and got talking to two men in the queue, a Puerto Rican and a Turk who was promoting the new corn pellets (grown in South America, processed and packaged in Spain) to serve with drinks in Turkey. The Puerto Rican asked the Turk if the Atkins Diet had made inroads in Turkey yet. “Oh yes,” the Turk said. “We eat a lot, a lot of bread in our very famous Atkins Diet.” “Bread?” The Puerto Rican brought his hands together in a pleading gesture. “A lot of bread, potatoes, rice,” the other replied. “Yes and now corn. . . .” And he added enthusiastically, “That is our Mediterranean Diet in Turkish. Akdeniz. ‘Mediterranean’ in Turkish. Akdeniz Diet.”
