Hacker News Reader

Comment by bni | Hacker News Reader

Article is good but with one puzzling flaw. They mention protein is one of the culprits, but nothing about why or how.

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.

Yes, something tells me there’s a lot of deli and processed meats involved.

Do remember that Italians cook all their meals, it's a cultural thing

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.

No of course, but a whole prosciutto package is very little (100g). There aren't enough calories in a single package to make you fat. Way easier to attribute the problem to pasta. Eating that lunch and dinner, if you make it using non-veggies a pasta dish can easily be more than 600 calories (and that also depends on how much is eaten).

Prosciutto is often eaten with melon, or with figs, so yeah it's processed meat, but then it's eaten with fiber and healthy micronutrients.

Mozzarella could be a problem too (center of Italy), eating a mozzarella with tomato and basil (caprese) is simple, yet the mozzarella is loaded with calories.

Then again, most dishes in Italy use natural ingredients, but that doesn't spare you from getting fat. Take pasta with egg and guanciale (carbonara) is a ton of calories even if home made

I wonder if biscotti is the real deal. In Italy, kids have breakfast with a cup of milk and X amount of biscuits, those are sugar, flour, egg, milk and something else to give flavor. Eat 4 of those and it's 200 calories. Eat 8 of those and it starts to get scary (400 calories) + 1 cup of milk = ~550 calories.

I did not realize this is mostly in the SOUTH.

This would be funny to hear for you, but to become fat in the south you just have to have a good appetite: most moms, grandmas and aunts will cook you INCREDIBLE meals (very flavorful stuff), but of course it will also be loaded with fats.

The likelihood of this being a problem related to preprocessed stuff is low

The thing that hurts most people around the world is that we still eat as if we’re gonna work from sun up to sundown habits are hard to break…

capitalism needs to sell you more food and bigger portions.

BIG FARMERS BREAKFAST, and many types of breakfast foods are largely a marketing invention; many societies never ate large breakfasts, and many still don't, e.g. the soup & natto breakfast in Japan

Reply on news.ycombinator.com