New statistics from OECD show that the Mediterranean countries have forgotten what their grandparents ate. These sun drained countries win the world cup of the most obese countries. Embarrassingly enough their traditional diet is the role model of all diets! On the top 10 list of obese children in the world, we find Greece as number 1, Italy as number 2 and Spain as number 5. (Top 10 Countries of Obese Children 2014).
As we also know that the future health cost for an obese 10-year old is $20.000, these countries have a huge problem to face. Some claim that it has to do with the economic crisis. I don’t think so. First of all the problem was known long before the crisis. It’s rather the opposite. Spain has had many warnings. Alerts came 15 years ago when statistics showed that a Spanish 8 year old kid had eaten as much sugar as the grandparents did in a whole life time. We know well that health has to do with knowledge and self-love, not money. Slovenia is number 4, in 10 years we will see Thailand, China and Russia there too. The more money the more kilos. If being healthy had to do with money the US (5th on the list) would have been the healthiest country in the world, something we all know is not true. It’s another type of wealth and health that we see here. We are not talking about starving countries.
The richer a country gets the more marketing is pumped into the market, as people can afford to buy more things. As our new ‘religion’, is market economy, the churches are the malls, and the holy scripts are written by the companies. They decide what is allowed and not through their organization Codex Alimentarius. They tell us what ever they want to sell more, and there is little or no control of what they want us to believe. This is where it all goes wrong. They want us to believe that additives are harmless, or that Diet or Low Fat products are good, or that prefabricated is better than cooking yourself. If you believe the producers and buy the ‘stuff’ they call food, you will end up over weight and probably ill.
From eating what scientist call ‘the Mediterranean Diet’ (pulses, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, more fish than meat, and olive oil) they now eat a diet of what we at Olive Retreat call non-food; i.e. prefabricated dangerous stuff with low or no nutrients. Another thing they changed is the beverage. Maybe this is the worst culprit. They went from being water drinking countries to a soda drinking. You find Coca Cola and Fanta in every fridge around the Mediterranean today.
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