Smoking is very common in Italy and I'm curious to know if the study elaborated on it's effects on these long-living Italians.
We don't even have anymore (with some exceptions of course) restaurants with white/red checquered tablecloths ;).
More or less there are 60 millions people spread over a country that is roughly 1300 Km (that is 800 miles) from north to south, it is hard to generalize about diet, climate and social structures ...
To give you an example, there is a (invisible) line just north of Bologna, recipes from regions above it traditionally use butter or animal fat, recipes from regions below it use olive oil.