Potato, potahhhto, spaghetti, spaghettini..

Potato and orange growers, bread-makers, pasta producers, rice growers -- all are worried about the shifting tide of consumer preferences away from carbs (see NYT today). One frustrated spokesperson for the orange juice industry stated: “no one has EVER gotten fat from drinking too much orange juice.” He could be right, though the issue now is no longer what caused obesity, but how we should go about getting rid of all that accumulated blubber.

It’s interesting to go back to the land of dumplings and gnocchi and spaghettini and see what they’re saying about obesity and carbs. There appears to be an organization in Italy called the “Italian Society of Obesity.” I’m not sure if their goal is to eradicate it or support it, but it is presided over by Professor O.Bosello, a name that just looks fat.

In their newsletter, they talk about how Italy has one of the lowest rates of obesity in Europe (so maybe this group was formed to combat thinness…this sounds incomprehensible to us, I know, what with dried pork rind being an acceptable snack to buy at a gas station, but we have to have enough imagination to contemplate the possibility of an industrialized nation worrying about people not being plump enough). Moreover, though they acknowledge that some studies go so far as to claim that 14% of Italians are overweight, others claim that the figure is closer to 6 – 7% and FALLING.

Are we bored enough yet with the carb thing to switch our attention back to the “Mediterranean Diet?”