Italians Say Ciao To Their Old Diet

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Italians Say Ciao To Their Old Diet

And obesity among children is rising

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

December 23, 2003

Rome

Big. That's how many Italians sum up their impressions of the United
States - from the Grand Canyon to the jumbo burgers to the backsides.

But Italians no longer have to cross an ocean to gape at flab.

This country of the good-for- your-waistline Mediterranean diet has
somehow produced a generation of chubby children. And with Italian
youngsters now among Europe's fattest, doctors are worrying about the
nation's health future.

"In the 20 years of my practice, the number of overweight and obese
children has increased enormously," says Andrea Vania, a pediatric
nutritionist in Rome. He's appalled at seeing patients as young as 5
with weight problems. "We never used to see this." Curiously, southern
European children in general are far chubbier than their counterparts
in the north, where traditional diets are fatty ones.

Experts say the blame for the extra pounds is twofold. Not only have
southern Europeans increasingly abandoned traditional diets rich in
vegetables, fruits and grains for fatty ones, but indulgent parents
are letting children lead some of the most sedentary lifestyles in
Western Europe.

"You [Americans] colonized us. Italian children don't follow the
Mediterranean diet anymore," says Margherita Caroli, an expert in
pediatrics and diet and a member of the European Child Obesity Task
Force. While calories are mounting, calorie-burning is not. "Italian
mamas coddle their children," says Caroli, who is based in southern
Italy.

A generation ago, Italian youngsters whiled away the hours kicking
soccer balls. Now their parents are enrolling them in computer or
English classes. And while grandparents might have walked children to
school a few decades back when cars were scarce in postwar Italy,
students these days are driven to school, or, if they're old enough,
zip there on their motor scooters.

Surveys of European youngsters' daily physical activity have found
that Italian and Portuguese children are the least active, says Laura
Rossi, a researcher at Italy's national nutrition institute, INRAN.
Italians are eating more meat and moving away from Mediterranean
staples such as pasta, rice and barley.

In the years right after World War II, many Italians went hungry and
"meat was seen as a luxury that was good for you," Rossi says.

The notion still sticks. The first question many Italian mothers ask
their children after school is, "Did you eat your meat today?"
Children's midmorning snacks used to be simple foods like focaccia, a
kind of chewy bread. Jumbo bags of potato chips are the current
playground status symbol.

Thirty-six percent of Italian children ages 6-11 are overweight,
compared with 34 percent in Spain, 31 percent in Greece, 20 percent in
England, 15 percent in Denmark and 13 percent in Finland, Caroli says.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about 15
percent of American children and teenagers are overweight. Experts
disagree over what constitutes obesity in childhood.

For adults, the World Health Organization's threshold for being
overweight is a body mass index of 25; those at 30 or more are
considered obese. BMI is calculated by multiplying weight in pounds by
703, then dividing by height in inches squared. Some experts contend
that, in general, any child with a BMI above the 85th percentile for
age and sex is obese, while others, like the CDC, use the 95th
percentile.

What experts agree on is that overweight children tend to grow up to
be overweight adults, with related problems like diabetes and heart
ailments.

"A photograph of an obese child is the photograph of a future obese
generation," says Michele Carruba, a pharmacologist in Milan who heads
the Italian Obesity Society.

Yet many parents resist the label of overweight for their children,
says Vania, the nutritionist. "Children with a little bit of fat on
them are considered cute and healthy." And Italy remains a country
where the command "Eat!" is still often equated with maternal love.

Vania recommends activity and dietary changes for his young patients,
among them Azzurra Cariola, who was 10 years old and 125 pounds when
she asked her mother to take her to a doctor. "The kids made fun of
me. They called me fatso," says Azzurra, now 14, in high school and no
longer overweight.

Her mother, Anna Maria D'Angelo, says Azzurra used to wolf down
cookies at friends' homes, and D'Angelo quit preparing traditional
vegetable dishes for her family because she was the only one who would
eat them. She puts much of the blame for the weight problem of her
daughter's generation on Italy's higher standard of living.

When D'Angelo visited her husband's small town in Sicily 30 years ago,
"There were no supermarkets, and all the people were skinny," she
says. "They ate pasta and beans, the real Mediterranean diet." Now
"they have supermarkets and lots of fat people."

Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

(Diarmid Logan) wrote in message . com...
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/n...alth-headlines

Italians Say Ciao To Their Old Diet

And obesity among children is rising

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

December 23, 2003

Rome

Big. That's how many Italians sum up their impressions of the United
States - from the Grand Canyon to the jumbo burgers to the backsides.


The coca-cola and french-fry generation.

TC

"tcomeau" ha scritto

Italians Say Ciao To Their Old Diet

And obesity among children is rising

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

December 23, 2003

Rome

Big. That's how many Italians sum up their impressions of the United
States - from the Grand Canyon to the jumbo burgers to the backsides.


The coca-cola and french-fry generation.

TC

Cola, hamburgers and french.fries are not guilty. I don't eat them and I
assure you'll become effortlessly tubby with spagetti , cotechino (
http://www.globalgourmet.com/food/eg.../cotlentl.html)and hundreds of
other italian dainties. The problem is for italians is that food is cheap
(comparing to past generations) , and more delicious the tidbit, more
caloric the intake