common feature of all on this list are high carb diets
Discussion
I would expet Italy as a high carb diet, but we do well here. I think is the mediterrainean diet, a lot of vegetables, fruit all around and good meat and milk derivates.
yes, lots of dairy, lots of olives, lots of olive oil and red wine
i'd bet that former yugoslavian countries are belowe the average of the rest of europe... it's not hard to miss while walking in central belgrade how slim most people are, for example, it was really shocking to me going from Bosnia to England, and then to Madeira... it's actually slightly worse here in Madeira than central england
i think part of that may be due to the fact that everyone drives cars everywhere and only old farts walk, the slopes here are murderous
plus, madeira cake, cane juice, and fried potato chips are three very popular foods here
obesity is 100% caused by high starch diets
you can get a bit tubby from too much milk also but that's a separate thing
absolutely, human in recent years has find a way to develop these pseudo-food engeneerized to be cheap, sterile, porn-like-tasty and to trick people to eat more without satisfying completely the hunger.
If you avoid completely that junk and eat only things that existed 100 years ago, you cant have a really bad diet today (most "bad diet" of people 100 years ago was about lack of food, not abundance).
i think something else that is part of this is common to almost all of southern europe, with the exception of maybe bulgaria and greece
small plot farms are very very common, in italy, number one in the world for 5 acre farm size and romania is not far behind and then you look across the balkans and they also have a lot of small plots and to some extent also portugal and spain (especially on the islands)
they are all growing tomatoes and capsicum and corn to feed pigs and keeping small flocks of sheep and small dairies, making their own cheeses and pickles and mostly selling directly to local distributors and not exporters
mostly the grain growing is for export, and all these small plot farmers eat from their own product or trade with neighbours
can confirm with experience, after being exposed to p2p little farmers markets for a great part of my life I then lived in a big city far from home and started to consume the "same products" but buying them from the great distribution. The difference is like night and day for most of the products, meat and olive oil in particular (even if I think "italian great distribution" is better then "great distribution in most other countries" because for some products it works just as "market aggregator" and still the products available come from little productions).