7/26/2026 at 11:15:25 AM
by porridgeraisin
7/26/2026 at 9:13:28 PM
And meanwhile, the Italian food lobbies are blocking Nutri-Score adoption at the EU levelby teolemon
7/26/2026 at 4:18:13 PM
Pasta and other carbohydrate-rich foods are nowhere near as bad as sugar for children. In the Nutella filled pastry, it is not the bread that’s the problem.Sugar (particularly in beverages) and lack of exercise are the main contribution of child obesity increase worldwide.
Don’t blame the potato.
by fco356pal
7/26/2026 at 5:13:57 PM
> Pasta and other carbohydrate-rich foods are nowhere near as bad as sugar for children.Sugar is as bad as it is because it's almost instantly absorbed. Plenty of carbohydrates are the same.
Fiber is what separates healthy carbs from unhealthy carbs, heck, even sugars.
An apple is healthy even though it's loaded with sugar because it's also loaded with fiber.
Apple juice is unhealthy because it's basically just the sugar.
Were I to guess, what's changed in italy is what's changed in the US. Flour has become highly refined, removing all the fiber that used to be present. This gives flour nice properties in terms of baking and pasta making, but it also removes a vital part of pasta.
by cogman10
7/26/2026 at 5:32:56 PM
> removing all the fiberYes this.
Also reduced vegetable intake. In many cases the fiber from vegetables can offset some refined carbs intake.
by porridgeraisin
7/26/2026 at 5:20:59 PM
Regular pasta and pizza dough are as almost as bad as sugar. Bread might not be as bad as Nutella but is still bad. Most popular Italian food tastes good but is horrible health wise.by weezing
7/26/2026 at 7:58:42 PM
Not by a mile, at least for pasta. When you compare the calorie density and glycemic index of pasta with other grains or grain-derived foods, it's really not bad. The dose makes the poison.by bitshiftfaced
7/26/2026 at 7:55:59 PM
Nobody yet mentioned young-learnt habits: school cafeterias & snack machines.When I was young, in lunch breaks you'd head over to the school's cafeteria. And what they had there? "Gevulde koek", stroopwafel, snack-sized bags of crisps, various (sweetened) dairy products, and iirc bananas & apples too. No veggies or fibre-rich food in sight. So of course kids would go for the sugar-laden & salty snacks. For drinks, there were vending machines. My favorite was hot chocolate. Again: high in sugar (no "more or less sugar" option).
Sometimes there were longer breaks due to a teacher falling ill or whatever. Then we'd head over to a supermarket nearby, and buy similar junkfood.
Of course we'd bring sandwiches from home. But not everyone, and not always. Some kids would throw their sandwiches in a trash can, and proceed to buy the junkfood mentioned above.
That school was 6 years of us kids' lives. Plenty of time to pick up unhealthy habits & bring those into adulthood.
Wouldn't surprise me at all if most schools worldwide are still like that. Healthy diet choices for pupils is far from #1 priority for school management given all the other things they have to deal with.
The fix would be to make healthier options the easy pick, and remove all junkfood offerings from schools' cafeterias. But good luck doing that nationwide under the watchful eye of junkfood multi-nationals.
by RetroTechie
7/26/2026 at 7:23:02 PM
So the problem is not Pizza nor pasta nor potatoes nor bread nor protein but all the extra supper high calories, near zero nutrition things that go on top of them?by BiraIgnacio
7/26/2026 at 7:34:11 PM
https://archive.ph/Shj4Xby arprocter
7/26/2026 at 4:53:34 PM
Surely writing 374 lbs is easier than 26st 10lb.by avree
7/26/2026 at 7:45:05 PM
And 1.125lbs is easier to write than 1 pound 2 ounces, yet Americans will look at you with a blank stare if you don't use ounces.When it comes to units, you can't please everybody. Especially if it's tangentially related to the old colonies.
by tredre3
7/26/2026 at 9:09:42 PM
people love to take potshots about how Americans don't know the metric system, but we love our 9mm's and a few gramsby anonym29
7/26/2026 at 5:42:45 PM
What an Americentric point of view.Not everybody measures weight in pounds, and to the primary readership of the BBC, stones and kilograms mean much more than weighing pounds.
Source: Canadian who understands neither kg or stones.
by julianlam
7/26/2026 at 7:10:40 PM
Isn’t stones/pounds just like feet/inches? Do you support dropping feet and only using inches? If not, why not?by pfannkuchen
7/26/2026 at 7:34:13 PM
I have no clue, give me kg thanks.by Fire-Dragon-DoL
7/26/2026 at 4:57:04 PM
The 2nd number immediately means something to me. While I have to consider the first. From my perspective it isn’t easier to comprehend.An unrelated point. I’ve noticed more people in the UK measuring their weight in KG. I think I may be in a dwindling minority of people who think in stones and pounds.
by release-object
7/26/2026 at 4:20:05 PM
Article is good but with one puzzling flaw. They mention protein is one of the culprits, but nothing about why or how.by bni
7/26/2026 at 5:45:56 PM
They don't say that. They say the 5P diet is unhealthy and the Mediterranean diet is healthy. But the Mediterranean diet contains the 5 P's too -- just in moderation and accompanied by lots of vegetables. So the 5 P's aren't necessarily unhealthy by themselves, but a diet that basically only has the 5P's is.by bryanlarsen
7/26/2026 at 7:05:00 PM
Yes, something tells me there’s a lot of deli and processed meats involved.by clickety_clack
7/26/2026 at 7:35:28 PM
Do remember that Italians cook all their meals, it's a cultural thingby Fire-Dragon-DoL
7/26/2026 at 8:03:38 PM
Italy is also famous for deli meats. I’m going to hazard a guess that not every Italian is buying raw meat and then preparing traditional dishes from scratch with it using only the freshest of natural ingredients etc.by clickety_clack
7/26/2026 at 1:04:55 PM
In 2004 I visited my family in Valencia, Spain. There was a local construction boom. There were family owned shops everywhere. Bakeries, fruit stands, etc. When I went back in 2014, it seems everything had changed. The shops were gone. The construction had slacked off. Instead there were now giant supermarkets and superstores. They were on the Euro now. My cousins blamed the EU for this. I'm assuming something similar happened in Italy, tho it is not mentioned in the article, which instead tends to blame the victims. When you replace the local food supply chain with prepared branded foods (Nutella, etc.), you get this. The EU has been great for European capitalists, but a detriment to the people in Europe.PS This was one of the major complaints of the long forgotten yellow-vests protests in France.
by drweevil
7/26/2026 at 3:32:59 PM
I'm over 50. I played in the streets whole afternoons, full days during school vacations. They were dangerous years in Rome, terrorism, political violence, heroin everywhere.Despite we are now living in safer years, no kids are playing in the streets anymore. Also in the nearby park, they struggle to reach a 5 vs 5 football (soccer) match when we had plenty more for a 11 vs 11.
A prominent psycologist just released an interview: why do italian parents love Sinner, the tennis player, praise his capabilities, his energy and willingness to train, but accept that their kids spend hours sitting on the couch playing games or browsing socials?
I also agree with you about local, family owned shops: in my area there were 2 supermarkets and they were far away. Now there are at least 6 and one is less than 300mt from my house. The family shops are still operating and thriving, but some have changed, adding locally pre-cooked food to the old offer.
So, less sport, more easily available junk food, more parents working late to keep supers open so more use of pre cooked food, more time spent on social media... a explosive mix
by mercurialuser
7/26/2026 at 7:37:13 PM
Pre-cooked means NOTHING like what you find in north America.You can get plenty pre cooked food that are healthy (and flavorful).
Of course you can also still ask for fries, but that's not common in Italy
by Fire-Dragon-DoL
7/26/2026 at 4:07:54 PM
The hypermarket concept was more or less invented in France in 1963. Clearly joining the EU allowed greater trade options which suit large scale market leaders, but their growth would have happened anyway.A lazy illustration, but there is not a single mention of the EU, the introduction of the Euro, or the single market on the extensive Wikipedia about the topic in the context of France, suggesting minimal impact.
by tweetle_beetle
7/26/2026 at 4:33:03 PM
Nobody is forced to eat (Italian!) Nutella instead of local made alternatives. As such many Germans do that.I do look for regional food, though they are more expensive but also Aldi + Lidl are a bless.
by snowpid
7/26/2026 at 5:47:01 PM
...In the South.It's a culture thing.
by thefz
7/26/2026 at 6:39:29 PM
Could it be explained by the local population density - basically the walkability for each resident?by Schiendelman