That Awful Mess THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET

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Chapter XIII That Awful Mess THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET My food has as its objective human well-being rather than that of the industries -
 eating better and not profits. Michael Symons It 's a bluff. It has never existed. It 's just an American-made, a simulacrum, another Disneyland. Patricia Crotty, Australian expert nutritionist, has no doubts about the much-vaunted Mediterranean diet. Pat is the only person in the world that has had the guts to go against the enormous scientific and commercial interest generated by the invention of this diet. Did not become famous because when he openly expressed his views and the media have ignored Masters of Taste have derided. Yet his reasoning is flawless from the scientific point of view: to follow a diet that does not belong to the tradition and that, moreover, is not able to make the benefits it promises, can cause serious problems. Imagine then if the scheme does not actually belong to any tradition, but was built around a table.
  Though it may sound incredible, Pat Crotty is right. Facts in hand, behind the Mediterranean diet is a history of incomplete scientific research, superficiality of the media and greedy commercial interests, intrigues, betrayal and blatant grandstanding. It is conceivable that many of the great protagonists of this saga may have acted in good faith, for example, some American supporters of the diet. But why, once we became aware of the truth, they have revised their positions? On the other hand, it is strongly arguable also the attitude of those who have associated with this diet, fake, never existed in history, the promotion of kitchen and food in the Mediterranean world. E 'questions, for example, that our great kitchen needed to be combined with the Mediterranean Diet invented by the Americans to succeed in the world. And again, it was really necessary that organizations like the International Olive Oil Council paid millions of euro to promote the supposed health benefits of a diet that does not exist? Is it not enough healthy olive oil in himself to succeed without the support of scientific and historical lies and subterfuge of marketing? Lies have short legs. What will happen to the credibility of these organizations when the fake diet will produce results contrary to expectations? An American-made It 's time for lunch at Southgate, in a rainy day in Melbourne, Australia. By Pat Crotty sit on the veranda of a restaurant on the Yarra river, sharing a daisy and a glass of Chenin Blanc. The worst moment in the career of Pat creeps in between us like a ghost. It was 1998 when this woman with the soft voice and gentle ways, endured the harshest attack on his many years of work on the effects of the Mediterranean Diet. The Bostonian K. Dun Gifford in Nutrition Today, in response to an article by Pat appeared in the same publication, does not hesitate to use personal invective accusing her of being inconsistent and that he misled his readers Marchiani. Gifford goes further and insinuates that Crotty is a scoundrel, a liar and ignorant of the Australian writing that the work is difficult to analyze, lacks logic, contains errors on the geography of Europe and ventured confused if not completely wrong conclusions. As if that were not enough, Gifford also accused of having done the smart omissions and erroneous citations. An offensive language so rarely seen in scientific publications.
  What could have never said Pat for being so brutally by Strapazzata Gifford? And most importantly, who is he? Before you answer these questions requires a premise. Patricia Anne Crotty is a "decent Australian." This term describes a person in Australia is endowed with qualities such as honesty, even brutal, courtesy, education, professionalism and decorum. Who does not possess these qualities is accused of being "un-Australian", that is out of the spirit that made possible the construction of this lucky country. Today Pat is an independent researcher, but at the time of the attack Gifford was university professor of Nutrition Science at Deakin University in Geelong in Victoria. He held this role since 1976, shortly after earning a Masters in Public Health at the University of California. In his long career, Pat has published books, written scientific papers, participated in international academic conferences and has directed major research programs. In addition, Pat has always been in love with Italy, its cuisine and its culture to the point that, even today, with great passion studying Italian. Why is this so hard for Mr. Gifford attacks a gentle and respectable woman like Pat? In the offending researcher had pitted the findings of his research on the Mediterranean Diet, which described "as an artifact, a surrogate model of consumption" which had given life artificially some medical experts Americans. And then he added: "A social, cultural and historical identity, the Mediterranean diet has not defined" because what we call that this is not the product of a situation of hunger and oppression "and" desperate conditions Life in the Italian after the Second World War. In other words, the Mediterranean diet for her had never existed. The Crotty also warned in his article that "the spread of the Mediterranean diet in countries outside the Mediterranean basin could give rise to differences of class, such as to marginalize those who, in multicultural societies, could or would not follow these new and expensive styles of home cooking or haute cuisine, this mode of eating out. " Finally it was asked if there was someone who really needs this diet does not exist: "In terms of life expectancy, the Mediterranean countries do not have an advantage over Australia. In the early nineties, life expectancy at birth was 75 years for Australian males and 80.9 for females, in Italy the numbers for men and women were respectively 73.7 and 80.5 years. "
  Great pyramid builders "What Pat says is truly revolutionary. E 'questioning motherhood, "says Danielle Gallegos, Perth's Murdoch University nutritionist and specialist in the relationship between diet and culture. It 's so: by his position the Crotty undermines the huge circus of the Mediterranean diet that Americans have set up but which have now been extended to the whole world. The researcher thus dismantles one of the great culinary narrative of our times, a dangerous myth on which the media have speculated, businesses of all sizes have made huge profits, thanks to which many other organizations have come to success. Among these is the Oldways Preservation & Exchange Trust, a nonprofit organization that promotes American "preservation of healthy traditional diets and sustainability in the agricultural and culinary." In the early nineties is just the Oldways to develop the concept of the Mediterranean diet, which makes it public in 1993, during an International Conference on the Mediterranean diet. A year later, together with the WHO Collaborating Centre for Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health and WHO / EURO World Health Organization (WHO), the Oldways Launches "Mediterranean Diet Journal" with a food pyramid, which in turn " Journal ", soon to become famous throughout the world. The diet is presented as the one presumably adotatta "in the early sixties in Greece, southern Italy and other Mediterranean regions where olive oil was the main source of fat." Oldways to admit that the Mediterranean Diet Journal - which requires a low consumption of meat, fish and dairy products - has been manipulated or "structured in light of the current state of research in nutrition." The manipulation is blessed by influential American scientists, particularly by Walter Willett, Director of the Department of Nutrition School of Public Health Harvard University (Boston) and Frank Sacks, Associate Professor of Nutrition at the same school. Willet is a favorite of American media for his controversial stances on issues of nutrition. Supporter of the zero option in respect of red meat, he made headlines when he said that the milk does not help in the prevention of osteoporosis, contrary to generally accepted scientific views. Sacks, however, in the eighties, was the first to argue - without much success, to tell the truth - that the olive oil could be used freely and that a diet based on olive oil was based on a more healthy ' absence of fat. A Willet and Sacks soon joined Gerd Assman, University of Munster (Germany), Director, inter alia, the International Task Force for the prevention of coronary heart diseases.
  The Pyramid, a visual device to illustrate diets made popular by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), soon attracted the interest of the American media. Indeed, in those years, Oldways strives to stimulate the attention of very lazy journalists sent out to Italy, Greece, Spain, Tunisia and Morocco, often at the expense of their governments. These educational trips, during which board, lodging and leisure are superior, are also involved doctors, nutritionists, historians and celebrity chefs. The American food writers come home excited and understandably eager to show their gratitude to the Oldways. "Mad about the Mediterranean diet", "E 'healthy. E 'sexy. And it is the diet of the moment, "writes The Washington Post. "The Mediterranean cuisine from our beloved is not only delicious but there is a lot of good," echoed the San Francisco Examiner. On the heels of this publicity, and especially its pyramid Oldways flying higher and higher. Harvard University, the FAO and WHO are just some of the 400 sponsors of the organization that manages an annual budget estimated at 4-5 million dollars (but a number of expenses such as travel and accommodation, are paid directly by the sponsor). A diet and its great man Founder and president of Oldways is K (ilvert) Dun Gifford. Yes, he, the author of the violent attack on Patricia Crotty. This explains his angry reaction to the positions of Crotty. Like, an anonymous foreign researchers, who worked in a remote provincial university in far away Australia, he could dare to threaten the global masterpiece built by Gifford of the Mediterranean Diet? Over six feet tall, a cavernous voice that prevails in the discussions, Mr. Gifford is not the kind of person who accepts criticism without reacting. After all, for someone like him, whose power is widely recognized, is a question of honor. Here's what some newspapers have written of him: "Dun Gifford has its own restaurant but has the power to influence what happens in restaurant kitchens", "menu has an extraordinary influence on the national team." The Boston Magazine writes that he is due to the fact that nowadays many restaurants in America "are the bread accompanied by olive oil instead of butter." Poor Pat Crotty could never imagine to those who had gone to stamp her feet. Born in Rhode Island and educated at Harvard, Gifford comes from a family of governors, senators and bankers and is used to being under the spotlight. Young age he was already working in the entourage of the Democratic Lyndon Johnson, when he was president of the United States, but more than anything else, Dun has always trusted friend of the Kennedy family. In a famous historic photo you see Bobby Kennedy dying in the arms of Gifford who had just bravely helped to block the murderess Sirhan Sirhan. And it was Gifford Kennedy called that because if he could see with the coroner that the death certificate was drawn up twenty-eight of Mary Jo Kopechne, a former assistant to Bob was ordering the documents of the statesman assassinated. Mary Jo died when "Ted Kennedy drove his car with her inside, away from the Chappaquiddick Bridge." Apparently Gifford, on that occasion, did a good job. Kennedy, however, I'm not the only important friend of Gifford. At one point in his life as a business partner Dun figure millionaire publisher Mort Zuckerman. Soon after, along with John Forbes, a senator from Massachusetts, Gifford founded a company that makes biscuits. At the same time also assumed the management of three restaurants in Boston. But I'm still trifles: Gifford, as revealed by his friends, is aiming much higher. Its grand debut in the restaurant scene is important is favored by the queen of American food and wine world: Julia Child. At the beginning Gifford really like the Child so that the woman opens the way for greater and more powerful culinary institutions in the United States, and became a director: the James Beard Foundation, the National Wine Coalition, the Culinary Institute of America and the International Association of Culinary Professionals. In a short time Gifford also chairs the American Institute of Wine and Food (AIWF), the Child was founded with the legendary Robert Mondavi, Richard Graff and James Beard. In those years, K. Dun end up becoming good friends with some celebrities of the culinary world as Jeremiah Tower and Alice Waters of Chez Panisse. Greg Drescher, director of AIWF, and culinary journalist Nancy Harmon Jenkins (Food & Wine, The New York Times), have become strategic allies. Both are without even the AIWF to follow him when he founded the Oldways Dun. Noël Riley Fitch Appetite For Life, a biography of the Child published in 1997, calls this move neither more nor less than the betrayal of Julia Child: Gifford had secretly put on the Oldways all'AIWF while still working. "Two sides are few to say how many it has Dun," declared later Clark Wolf, a gastronomic consultant in New York, annoyed because many sponsors had followed Gifford, leaving the AIWF in serious financial problems. Among the first sponsors to follow Guifford is the International Olive Oil Council in Madrid that was to become one of the largest funders of Oldways. When you are alone, you're just In far away Australia Pat Crotty is obviously unaware of all these things when he wrote the article that would unleash the wrath of Gifford. Nobody, least of all the Australian press, lift a finger to defend it. But, although it is painful to face the battle alone, Pat did not abandon his search, even bringing together new evidence in support of its argument. "The most delicious contradiction is that the pyramid of the Mediterranean Diet 'official' aims at preserving the traditional cuisine through its international spread," says Pat. "That is the paradox of keeping with the globalization of regionalism". His accusations are even more serious: "The medical community is convinced that the heart problems and cancer can be prevented by following the Mediterranean diet. This is a distorted vision of the concept of kitchen. It 'a superficial way of looking at what the people eat and why they do it. " "The famous Mediterranean diet, no matter how delicious, is in many ways an American phenomenon, not Mediterranean." The speaker this time is not Pat, but Margaret Visser, the Canadian anthropologist and author of the bestseller Much depend on Dinner and The Rituals of Dinner. Pat and Margaret Visser is not known but, unwittingly, supports the Australian nutritionist when he says: "Take for example those raw vegetables, or nearly so (which are in the pyramid" official "author's note). I can say from personal experience that the Italians, at home, cook the vegetables up to capacity. " He added: "The pyramid shows that the diet of red meat is eaten very rarely: the Mediterranean Diet is sold as something that responds perfectly to this trend is that northern and modern vegetarianism ... try instead for a ride in any market Barcelona and you will see that people in the largest cities in the Mediterranean, is perfectly happy to consume large quantities of red meat. The Mediterranean then eat plenty of eggs! " In the name of a science-not credible Beyond the palatability of Mediterranean cuisine, the zealots of the Mediterranean Diet, and Oldways in particular, insist that the "official diet" has been so successful because it is associated with a high life expectancy in adulthood and a low likelihood of coronary problems. To assert that rely solely on the work of Ancel Keys, a renowned epidemiologist who has worked at the University of Minnesota from 1939 to 1975. "And 'thanks to his insights and his energy that we are all here," Gifford is usually recognized. The name of Keys is of considerable importance in the American scientific community. It was he who set up the K rations, balanced meals that during World War II, saved thousands of soldiers from hunger. But above all, was to make him famous as "the dietary hypothesis of coronary heart disease", or to argue that heart problems would result from excessive consumption of saturated fats from meat and dairy products. Keys was done in this field of research while trying to find an explanation for the rapid increase of heart disease among men of business in Minnesota. E 'in 1954 when he goes to Geneva to advocate his "hypothesis" in front of a panel of experts that WHO was examining the alarming worldwide increase of cardiovascular disease. Keys For some reason, however, neglects important data showing the decrease in consumption of red meat in the United States during the same period the increase in heart disease. The epidemiologist instead supports his hypothesis with experience "personal". Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, two American nutritionists of Weston Price, a foundation that promotes the consumption of soluble activators, found only in animal fats, they provide an interesting account of the personal experiences of the scientist: "According to Keys, his approach to the Mediterranean diet began in the early fifty ... in 1951 directed the work of the first FAO conference in Rome where, as he himself says, when asked for news of the diet and the new epidemic of coronary heart disease, "Gino Bergami, Professor of Physiology at the University of Naples, said that Napoli heart disease did not represent a problem. " The Fallon and Enig write that then Dr. Keys' was the brilliant idea to visit the sunny Naples "where" he discovered the world of taverns and eats only pasta and pizza. " At that time Keys was still a penniless visiting professor at Oxford University and probably could not afford much more. The Fallon and Enig ironically describe his "busy search" during which "Keys found that heart attacks were rare indeed in Naples except between the small upper class whose diet differed from that of the remaining population - ate meat every days instead of every week or two. " The Seven Countries Study Returning to the Geneva conference, no one knows for sure whether he mentioned Keys like "research" that had led to Naples to support his equation diet - blood cholesterol - heart disease. Certainly not fared very well when he was asked to present scientific evidence. Actually it was almost ridiculed by his illustrious colleagues. "Keys was treated badly by this point ... As a result of this unique and moving experience ... He sprang to the challenge, motivation, and then the creation of the Seven Countries Study, "recalls Harry Blackburn today, one of his closest collaborators. "The firm from which flowed the original idea of ​​the Mediterranean diet was huge and innovative", he admits Pat Crotty. It lasted from 1958 to 1970, but preliminary tests had been conducted in Finland, Italy and Greece in 1956-57. Was based on about 13,000 people aged between 40 and 59 years at the start, divided into 16 cohorts. Most of them lived in small villages in Greece, Italy, Japan, Finland. An exception was the sub-groups of laborers in Serbia, those of railroad workers in the United States and Rome, academics in Belgrade and residents of Zutphen in the Netherlands. Researchers from each of the countries concerned joined by Keys. Among these was Tatko Buzina, a nutrition scientist in Zagreb which, according to Crotty, was in fact "the first to advance the diet-heart hypothesis, after observing that the higher levels of cholesterol were recorded in men of eastern Yugoslavia, where they ate more animal fat than the west. " Science or prophecies? Keys as he prophetically anticipated, ending the Seven Countries Study showing a strong link between coronary heart disease, blood cholesterol and the recruitment of fatty acids. Groups of Greece, southern Italy and other Mediterranean regions where it is assumed that olive oil is the main supplier of fats, they behave better in terms of life expectancy and diseases of the heart. Galvanized by the results obtained, Keys and his wife Margaret, published a series of successful books. In Eat Well, Stay Well: the Mediterranean Way and The Benevolent Bean torque spread the good news of the Mediterranean diet as a preventive measure miraculous heart attacks. Both gourmets and chefs from all over, fans of Italy with a second house on the coast bell Keys spouses decide to vote for their life's mission to change the dietary habits of people in the United States and around the world. The intervention of the Keys, however, turns sour "cholesterol controversy" between "those calling for immediate changes to the diet of the population and instead demanded that the other evidence before the most effective dietary changes to boost general", as explains Crotty. He soon began to emerge of the early criticisms of the Seven Countries Study. The Fallon and Enig say Keys could prove the validity of his theories because he was only able to select for his research "countries where heart disease is that the consumption of saturated fat were high, ignoring those in which the regime diet was the same but heart disease were rare. " Respected experts in statistics, such as Russell Smith, would have dismissed the study as "enormously inconsistent with regard to the groups and greatly suspicious." In particular, Smith stated that "the links between diet and mortality rates have an incredible array of inconsistencies and contradictions ... it's almost inconceivable that the Seven Countries Study has been completed with such sloppy science." The criticism increased when they finally become public, but it is too late to stop the madness Mediterranean. Aggressive food industry, associations for the protection of health, food geeks, doctors and insurance companies are already traveling at full steam in the exploitation of the miraculous diet. The South of Italy was chosen as the preferred location of the "new" diet, the original land par excellence. A paradox because, in the Seven Countries Study, the Italian side is the one that makes more water from the scientific point of view. For starters, the figures relate to the diet followed by fewer than 100 people: a sample totally insignificant when you consider that the population of southern Italy amounted to over 20 million people. But more serious is the fact that two of the three towns being considered, and Crevalcore Montegiorgio, are respectively the center and north of Italy. Nicotera, the only one in the South, in the province of Vibo Valentia, in Calabria, there are no data, in fact, "was abandoned because of logistical problems." Only those who have limited knowledge of the history of Italy can consider the northern Crevalcore like a town in the deep south, especially in the sixties when he was still represented a huge ten kilometers away in Italy and often result in profound differences in language, culture, cuisine and eating habits. Because of these differences Italian towns in the area have fought fierce wars in the past. The creative Keys and his colleagues do not lose heart and replace the missing data of Nicotera with those of two small towns of Campania and Basilicata, hundreds of miles away. Not to mention that the data were collected between 1963 and 1965 for research (Euratom) were totally different. Man of Crete and academics in Belgrade Looking at those events forty years later it seems that Keys and Co., before leaving, had already in mind what they discovered in their research. For example, men Aegean island of Crete (Greece) emerge from the studio with "the lowest risk of heart attacks, the lowest mortality and highest life expectancy of the Western world," writes Harry Blackburn. According to his idyllic description, the man of Crete, "calmly scrutinizes the horizon," is a shepherd or small farmer, a bee farmer, a producer of olives or wine, "lives in a kind of earthly paradise , "in the glow of his Greek island of ... the buzzing of cicadas ... at the end of the morning resting and socializing ... toast the day with a cool glass of lemonade ... his main meal at midday is eggplant, with large, fleshy fungi [the two vegetables grow in different seasons, nda] ... and bread soaked in that golden nectar that is the Cretan olive oil. " "Under the shining moon," the man of Crete is a passionate and graceful dancer, admired by his friends, "decent behavior, happy expression." On Sunday afternoon, chatting with his family "in the shade, caressed by a healthy ocean breeze that brings with it the delicate aroma of burnt olive twigs, grass clippings, fresh manure, which comes from neighboring fields." "He feels safe in the place which has always involved" and "during his old age sits in bronze oblique light of the sun of Greece, wrapped in an intense aura of lavender." Pat Crotty said that among the many possible Mediterranean diet "there are obvious reasons that have led to pair it with the most beautiful regions in the Mediterranean, in order to promote it through the eye-catching images reminiscent of that region." It is probably for this reason that the Oldways has secured a Study Centre's own use and the "partisans of the Mediterranean food and culture" not far from Crete, in a restored Genoese villa in the beautiful, historic Greek island of Chios. How reliable are the descriptions of Blackburn, a man who, during the period of the research was also a spy for the CIA? Rosemary Barron, food journalist who has run for several years, a cooking school on Crete and informed written a book on Greek cuisine, estimated that the Cretans, each day, forfeit up to six hundred calories only with cheese. It takes less than two hundred grams of goat cheese to swallow twice the amount of saturated fat recommended by the pyramid of the Mediterranean Diet Journal. But Barron also warns that Cretans eat large amounts of other foods high in saturated fat: yoghurt, milk, lamb, goat, pig, fat hens and chickens, snails, kidneys, liver and spleen, rabbit and hare-based appetizers thin smoked sausages. Also consume "ten eggs about a week, not counting the shellfish, sea urchins, octopus, squid, cuttlefish and fish eggs that come as fillings of small cakes or fried in the traditional taramosalata. A Blackburn Keys and food of course these customs have escaped. Patricia Crotty launched another bomb: 'It is true that man Cretan has statistically the highest rate of longevity, but it is also true that the Keys study has found the same rate, even among academics in Belgrade. These data are known for twenty years, but, strangely, this last group was not mentioned in any discussion, nor to their diet and even less for the style of life. " Cretan with men, the Academy of Belgrade consumes a lot more red meat and sugar but less fruit and vegetables, while it has a similar fish consumption. Because these data have been kept secret? Pat has his own ideas about it: "The social identity of this group is too similar to that of the researchers themselves and do not have the exotic charm of the man of Crete." Needs, fears, romances and Anglo-Saxon The traditional Anglo-Saxon search of exoticism, nostalgia, old ways (old ways) and the huge interests of the industries connected to everything, are certainly one of the keys to understand the boom of the Mediterranean diet that has never existed. "The brilliantly publicized Mediterranean diet," writes the Visser, "has often been cleverly changed ... mainly to respond to the needs and fears of U.S. and UK - with the perception of these needs and those fears intensified and initially orchestrated by clever advertising campaigns related to distribution systems. " And Crotty added: "When discussing the non-Mediterranean cuisine and the Mediterranean diet, there are always pleasant and sunny images of nature tourism with well-fed peasants, self-sufficient and bursting with health. All this has very little to do with hunger and oppression that many Italians have lived before and during the study. " In fact, it is disconcerting to note that the large literature concerning hunger and oppression of the peasants of Southern Italy has been completely ignored or misrepresented. "No messages, human or divine, has reached this deep-rooted poverty in this dark night ... ... Christ never came," wrote Carlo Levi in ​​Christ Stopped at Eboli, one of the novels that best describes the life of peasants in the south first half of the twentieth century. Academics at Harvard who helped to make the Mediterranean diet should read what the historian Gaetano Salvemini, who also taught at Harvard, writes about the most backward areas of the south economically: mountainous areas with little arable land, beaten by Torrential rains during the winter and subject to frequent earthquakes. More than sun and pleasures ... In the years following the Seven Countries Study Ancel Keys regularly spent his holidays in Italy and reacts with a certain discomfort at the fact that Southern Italians have changed their social habits and food products. What irritates him more than anything is that the Southerners have ceased to follow "his" Mediterranean Diet. "Unfortunately the recent changes in the Mediterranean countries in danger of destroying the virtue of healthy food that we had observed forty years ago," says Keys. In a paradoxical kind of appeal epidemiologist relies on an education campaign so that even the Mediterranean populations "resume" the Mediterranean diet, which in reality had never followed. The most ironic thing is that food businesses Italian, Greek and Spanish and most of the media in these countries, almost welcoming the invitation of the Keys, begin to promote food and cooking in the sign of a diet that had never belonged to them . In parossisismo that breaks all seem to ignore that the Keys dietary changes that have brought great benefits deems unacceptable. Pat Crotty said that during a period of change (up to the nineties), "the height of young males of southern Italy has risen by an average of 6-7 inches, about twice their age in Northern Europe." Moreover, while "meat consumption has quadrupled since the fifties, between 1969 and 1990, Italy has been a significant decrease in rates for diseases that damage the heart and coronary arteries, particularly the 30% for men and 47% for women, "says Pat according to recent research. "The truth is that in the sixties, the years of the study, many Southern Italians did not follow any diet but were just poorly fed." The danger of transplants Back in Melbourne, Patricia and I finished lunch. There are gulls on the Yarra River and is now released some sun. It 'difficult to understand how and why a study as flawed as that of the seven countries, has become the basis for the work and Guifford Oldways. And most importantly, because the opposing voices have been stifled. Pat I ask one more thing: "Why, why did you decide to talk?" "Look," he says, "you can not pack up an entire kitchen to plant it in a completely different context. Okay move small elements of a diet, but not a whole culinary tradition. " Even Margaret Visser thinks so: "You are free to borrow what you want but you have to take the consequences that may result in that loan." And the consequences can be very harmful. According to Crotty, "you can have unexpected results in the companies that use individual elements such as olive oil and pasta, outside of the original contexts from which they come." Patricia is particularly concerned, for example, to the way Australians eat pasta, "which is very different from the way in which Italians incorporate this food into their meals." "Australians," says Pat, "I used to eat a large portion of pasta with no vegetables, unless it is a salad. They have no place to put the vegetables, especially if the meal is served so abundant in a shallow dish. Pat points out that this is not a coincidence that "some studies have concluded that in Australia those who eat more meat, eat more vegetables."