However, the Italian paradox that interests me has very little to do with wine and more to do with kcals-which is what the Italians call calories. Kcal values are on every box/product of food here, and they are done per 100 grams. 75 kcal per 100 grams of pesto/beans/salami. Only it is really more like 100000000 kcal for salami, but I digress. The paradox that I am referring to is how little interest the Italians have in exercise, and a great interest in food, and yet America is the country struggling with obesity. The logic just does not make sense. Yes, yes, I know, everybody thinks it is because Italians walk everywhere and have smaller portions and don't have processed food. Only this is bullshit. Very few Italians walk great distances ever since the Vespa was invented, and Nutella is most definitely processed and full of transfat, and that is a staple in an Italian's diet here.
This is how an Italian eats: Breakfast consists of a pastry of some sort, and a foamy and milky coffee. Lunch includes mozzarella, lots of bread, pasta, and wine. Many glasses of wine.
After that, later in the night before dinner, the "aperitivo" is taken. This is basically happy hour for the Italians. They gather at a popular bar and have an aperitivo, which is a drink that is supposed to open/ready your stomach for dinner. A typical aperitivo is a glass of white wine, champagne or Compari Orange. Do not be fooled however, by the word aperitivo. It might be singular, but it always involves drinks in the plural. Two or three glasses of wine. If my mother had 3 glasses of wine before dinner, she would be on the floor.
Dinner is then eaten much later at night. So late in fact that my parents, despite being 6 hours behind me, probably have dinner before I do. In Italy, dinner starts at around 9:30 pm, and goes for around 2 hours. They also have four courses-so this stuff about Italians having small portions and us being used to extra large Olive Garden portions of pasta is simply not vero (true). Also, the Italians start their first course, primi, with pasta. Their secondi with meat, and their contorni (third) with salad. This is the opposite of the United States, where we eat our salad first to prime our stomachs for heavier food, and to help full us up so we don't gorge ourselves on pasta and pizza. Finally, after the third course of salad that no doubt they cannot really eat after all of the wine, cheese, pasta and meat, there is dessert and coffee, or sambuca, which is an after dinner drink that tastes like licorice.
This is, as you can imagine, quite an assault on the stomach. A lot of alcohol, a lot of food in general, and then because it is so late, the food simply sits in your stomach. This is the paradox. How can Italians shun exercise, and then eat all of this fatty food, especially in such large amounts late at night and still remain slender?! It goes against all of the advice of South Beach, Atkins, Weight Watchers and most importantly, Oprah (otherwise known as God) who never eats later than 6pm because otherwise the calories you take in will not be burned off.
This may just sound like an interesting anecdote about food and culture and Italian, but to me, this realization has rocked me to the core. Everything I thought about life (and as girl who recently relinquished, quite unwillingly and not without a few temper tantrums, her teen years to enter her early 20s, I have spent a good portion of my life thinking about nutrition and calories) is no longer true. It is as if I just found out that the sky is not actually blue, but red, and that nothing is how I think it should be. Much like a Quentin Tarintino movie.
...while I may be exaggerating a little, this Italian paradox is still quite shocking, no?
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