The official, internationally disseminated pyramidal diagram, devised by distinguished North American research teams, includes a decree that almost no red meat shall be eaten: red meat occupies the tiny tip of the pyramid, and should pass one’s lips only “a few times a month.” The Catalan pyramid puts meat in a large layer in the middle of the triangle: “two or three servings a day.” Eggs likewise. The Mediterranean Diet Pyramid allows eggs “zero to four times a week, including any egg used in cooking and in prepared foods.” Catalans, looking around for something small enough in their food range to occupy a pyramid tip, decided that only salt would fit: salt should be eaten as little as Americans say you should eat red meat. And who, after all, is Mediterranean around here?
That’s not a rhetorical question: it expresses some irritation, and also a real bewilderment. Healthful eating in America – Atkins notwithstanding – still in large measure means following the Mediterranean Diet’s principles. Spaniards are eager to tap into the huge economic potential of this phenomenon. Alimentaria, Barcelona’s enormous food fair, now the second largest in the world, was host this year to the Fifth International Congress on the Mediterranean Diet. It has become urgent for the Spanish food industry, and for those of other Mediterranean countries, to understand exactly what is driving this essentially American myth.
Whatever else it was, the usda Pyramid was a preferential model that in its general outlines had prevailed for at least a century. But by the mid-1970s, several things had become obvious in America. More and more people were becoming obese, and far too many were suffering from heart attacks and cancer. This had not always been so; moreover, there were other societies where this was still not the case. It was also admitted that, where people have a choice, they usually make their concrete, individual, meal-by-meal decisions about what to eat following the attractions of pleasure rather than for austere reasons of health.
A third realization has become unavoidable more recently: in the modern world, where time is the structuring principle, “pleasure” for most people must include convenience. People have little time to eat, and almost none for cooking. More and more of us can’t cook, and won’t cook. The richer the homeowner, the more technologically and aesthetically advanced the kitchen – and the less it is used.
But first, the health issue. Which, the creators of the Mediterranean Diet Pyramid asked themselves, are the model societies, the ones enjoying good health? Well, one was the population of Crete – Crete in the 1940s. In 1948 the post-war Greek government invited the Rockefeller Foundation to help them evaluate the country’s standard of living. Crete was chosen for a survey of its demographic, economic, social, medical, and dietary characteristics. A report was eventually published: Crete: A Case Study of an Undeveloped Area (1953).
Researchers were first trained, then sent to live in the villages of the 765 families being studied. Their work included interviewing 128 of these families daily, weighing all of their food intake, describing it in detail, witnessing cooking practices, counting the number of times people put anything into their mouths, and investigating what was carried out with the garbage. “It is difficult to imagine,” wrote a nutritionist in 1995, “that anything like a survey of this magnitude could be initiated – or funded – today.”
It is notoriously difficult to find out the exact truth about what people eat and drink. The best-intentioned persons in the world misrepresent what they ingest, exaggerate it, minimize it, forget what they have done, fail to notice what they are doing, give up on keeping the regular records they promised. Food surveys constantly contradict both each other and the facts discernible through other means. The Crete report is thought to have been uniquely thorough in its genre. It was hard, however, even for these thorough researchers, to find out just how much wine was being drunk. Cretans evidently placed some limits on the ambitions of their nosy guests.
The document’s section on food practices caused a sensation and still makes waves today. It was brought to bear on information that arrived later: that Greeks had low incidences of heart disease. People on Crete ate almost no meat or eggs, hardly any dairy products, plenty of cereals, bread, vegetables, nuts – and a great deal of olive oil. People were thin, but with “few serious nutritional problems.” They said they loved meat, though – 72 percent said meat was their favourite food. They also habitually did hard physical work, and almost nobody owned a car.
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