By Marco Romagnoli
The promise of a protracted, wholesome, pleased existence dwelling an lively, community-based life-style below heat, sunny skies could also be inside attain. In truth, it may very well be in your desk.
The Mediterranean weight-reduction plan has been included on Unesco’s Intangible Cultural Heritage record since 2010. Not solely does the weight-reduction plan have assured cultural worth, it’s also a strong strategic software for selling meals merchandise equivalent to olive oil.
Usually cited for its well being advantages, the Mediterranean weight-reduction plan was first described in a 1953 ebook about Crete. On the time, individuals have been amazed on the low incidence of heart problems among the many inhabitants of this Greek island, in contrast with northern Europeans.
Amongst different issues, this olive oil-based weight-reduction plan encourages the consumption of recent meals, seasonal fruit and greens and complete grains. It embodies the essence of the Mediterranean life-style, in accordance with the Unesco definition:
The Mediterranean weight-reduction plan entails a set of abilities, information, rituals, symbols and traditions regarding crops, harvesting, fishing, animal husbandry, conservation, processing, cooking and notably the sharing and consumption of meals. Consuming collectively is the muse of the cultural id and continuity of communities all through the Mediterranean basin. It’s a second of social alternate and communication, an affirmation and renewal of household, group or group id.
However past its affect on our well being, what does the Mediterranean weight-reduction plan say about us as a society? May or not it’s the symptom of one thing?
As a postdoctoral researcher, my analysis lies on the intersection of heritage and tourism research, meals and psychological well being.
In 2021, I carried out subject analysis in Cilento (Italy), Soria (Spain) and Marseille (France), the place I regarded on the inhabitants’ attachment to the Mediterranean weight-reduction plan. I listened to their tales and tried to grasp the native and social dynamics at play within the Mediterranean weight-reduction plan idea.
The idea of the Mediterranean weight-reduction plan refers to a way of life that strengthens social relationships and is nice on your well being. It sounds easy and coherent.
Nonetheless, the society through which we reside turns the work of assembly these primary wants into one thing extra advanced. The well being and social dimensions of the Mediterranean weight-reduction plan are seen as extraordinarily fascinating as a result of they characterize a steadiness that’s missing in globalised societies.
Claude Fischler, a sociologist of human vitamin, describes the multidimensional disaster of the meals system in trendy societies.
In his view, there’s a psychopathology of every day consuming underway. That is characterised by “urge for food disturbances, bulimic assaults, anxious or compulsive snacking, and many others.” Simply consider the consumption of ultra-processed meals or ready-made and frozen meals, eaten on their very own in entrance of the TV within the night or in entrance of the pc throughout lunch break.
On this psychopathological perspective on meals, which additionally mirrors a societal disaster, mechanisms for cultural (and on this case, meals) reactivation are showing. The frenzy to the Mediterranean weight-reduction plan is a mirrored image of this societal disaster, as a result of it’s the reverse of our lifestyle.
With its inclusion on the Unesco record, the Mediterranean weight-reduction plan has thus turn out to be a prestigious ‘monument’ of Mediterranean culinary artwork.
This meals tradition has been mythologised and made part of our heritage after present process an irreversible course of of abrasion of meals manufacturing and consumption techniques within the Mediterranean space.
The meals area is without doubt one of the finest locations to specific the anxieties and fears of up to date life.
Fabio Parasecoli, a researcher in meals research, describes the anxieties attributable to globalisation as gastronativism, “the ideological use of meals in politics to advance concepts about who belongs to a group (nevertheless outlined) and who doesn’t.”
So gastronativism represents a political software that gives “a way of rootedness, consolation and safety” within the face of perceived collapse (local weather change, wars, pandemics, globalisation).
The Mediterranean weight-reduction plan is a part of this gastronativist method, standing for a way of life that may be adopted.
We frequently hear in regards to the Mediterranean weight-reduction plan from establishments and lecturers. What we don’t hear a lot about are the views of the communities that practise this lifestyle.
My subject analysis in 2021 aimed to grasp the alternative ways through which the Mediterranean weight-reduction plan is outlined, described, understood and lived, relying on the group.
In Cilento, the Mediterranean weight-reduction plan is synonymous with “life-style.” It’s a part of native id and a reference to the broader socio-cultural sphere (“our life-style,” the locals say).
In Soria, it embodies a “dietary mannequin” and within the area of well being: the adjectives mostly used to explain it are “wholesome,” “helpful,” and “health-conscious.”
In Marseille, the time period “weight-reduction plan” conjures up photographs of fasting, deprivation and abstinence, whereas the time period “Mediterranean” refers to natural, seasonal and wholesome meals. The reference right here is extra to the meals trade.
Whether or not understood as a dietary mannequin, a lifestyle or an instance of intangible heritage, the Mediterranean weight-reduction plan represents a method out of a system (societal, meals, financial, environmental) in disaster and in fixed search of reference factors.
Seismographs are devices that report and measure earthquakes. Like a “sociocultural seismograph,” the Mediterranean weight-reduction plan permits us to seize the vibrations, i.e. the adjustments going down in modern society with which cultural (and dietary) practices should contend.
Marco Romagnoli is Postdoctoral analysis fellow, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). This text is republished from The Dialog below a Inventive Commons licence