Two nutrition experts presented their research at a conference on the benefits of a Mediterranean diet with organic food, and their proposals for making it accessible to everyone.
The Mediterranean diet is an eating pattern with proven beneficial effects on the body, and when the food consumed is organic, those benefits increase further. The topic was discussed at the Festa del Bio in Bologna on 23 September: on stage were Laura Di Renzo, director of the Postgraduate School of Nutritional Science at the University of Tor Vergata, and Stefania Ruggeri, senior researcher at Crea-alimenti e nutrizione.
Di Renzo, an expert in nutritional genomics and body composition, described an experiment carried out within the closed community of a monastery: "We asked the resident friars to follow a Mediterranean diet, providing them with a specific basket of foods. By assessing their fat and muscle mass and their microbiota at the start and end of the experiment, we noticed that, while maintaining the same lifestyle and the same energy intake and changing only the diet, body composition had shifted in favour of an increase in metabolically active cells, and that a modification of the gut flora had occurred which had enabled the activation of genes that switch off inflammation." Organic products, as Di Renzo explained, are rich in nutraceutical properties and help to suppress the inflammation associated, for example, with weight gain, but also with cardiovascular disease and infertility.
"The results of a study we conducted on young men with subfertility issues," said Ruggeri, "showed that an organic plant-based diet improved fertility. We also found that a proper diet can be an opportunity during pregnancy to reduce the risk of gestosis, as well as to protect the foetus — and therefore the adult of tomorrow — from the risk of obesity and cardiovascular disease."
Choosing organic food is an investment in health: "Even if organic can cost more than conventional," explained Di Renzo, "that difference is minimal compared with the expenditure on medicines and interventions that would be needed in the event of, for example, cardiovascular disease." On the cost of organic food, the two experts stressed the need to make quality food accessible to everyone: "What we have observed is that raising taxes on processed foods high in sugars and salt does not work to change eating habits; instead, what is needed is to reduce taxes on foods with proven quality and to pursue food education policies," said Di Renzo.
Still on the question of access to quality food, the experts are working to change the composition of food aid parcels: "They should contain wholemeal pasta, greater quantities of fruit and vegetables and, in the case of immigrants, for example, foods that respect their culture, because these people are not used to eating pasta or ultra-processed foods — these are foods that are harmful to their microbiota, which, incidentally, is better than ours," Di Renzo continued: "
Quality food must make its way into school and hospital canteens: "Food has value; through food and the way it is presented — in the right containers, in the right ways — we take care of people," concluded Ruggeri.