This time of
year, we start thinking about bikini waxes and getting into perfect shape for
those lazy, hazy days on the beach. To help us, every day there seems to be a
new diet fad to try that frequently turns out to be a nutritional nightmare.
Yet there have long been far better alternatives, such as the Mediterranean
diet. With its concentration on fruit, vegetables, bread, pasta, chicken, fish,
olive oil and a little wine rather than red meat, eggs and dairy products, it
helps fight obesity and limits the production of cholesterol in the body, a
major factor in heart disease.
Beginning in the late 1950s, American physiologist Ancel Keys and his
biochemist wife, Margaret, introduced the Mediterranean diet to the
English-speaking world through the publication of three best-selling books: Eat Well, Stay Well (1959), The Benevolent Bean (1967) and Eat Well,
Stay Well the Mediterranean Way (1975). To test his theories, from 1963 until 1998, Keys lived and
worked in Pioppi, a fishing village on the Cilento coast south of Salerno,
where he bought a property out of the royalties from the first book. Named Minnelea,
a fusion of ‘Elea,’ a place visited by Homer’s Ulysses and ‘Minnesota,’ his
garden with its orchard, olive trees, vines and vegetable plot overlooked the
sea. Keys also set aside allotments there for fellow scientists.
Born to very
young parents in Colorado Springs on January 20, 1904, Keys grew up in
California, where his family had settled to be near his uncle, silent movie
star Lon Chaney. As a teenager, Keys ran away from home and had to take a
series of unskilled jobs to survive. On returning, he studied chemistry at the
University of California, Berkeley, but, still restless, he dropped out and set
sail on a tanker for China. Back home again, he took a degree in economics and
political science and began working at a Woolworth’s store. Bored with this, in
1927, he earned a master’s degree in zoology in just six months. To complete
his studies, he took a doctorate in oceanography and biology at the Scripps
Institute of Oceanography and then went to England for his doctorate in
physiology from Kings’ College of Cambridge. Interested in human physiological
reactions under extreme conditions, he joined the Fatigue Laboratory at Harvard
in 1936 and took part in an expedition to the Andes. In 1937, he moved to the
University of Minnesota to he set up what would become the world famous
Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene, where he would continue to work until his
retirement.
In 1939, with
World War II approaching, the US War Department asked Keys to create a food box
that troops could easily carry. He put together a meal consisting of biscuits,
dry sausage, hard candy and chocolate. The army added chewing gum, toilet paper
and four cigarettes to each package and called them K-rations in his honour. As
the war ended, he began concentrating on the effects starvation would have on
millions in Europe. In 1950, he published The Biology of Human Starvation, the
results of his groundbreaking research based on observations of 36
conscientious objectors who had volunteered to be subjects for the study.
After the war,
with increased prosperity in America leading to a richer diet and a growing
problem of heart disease, Keys found a new focus for his research. Surprised
when, in 1954, he was told by a professor in Naples that cardiovascular
ailments were not prevalent in Italy, he embarked on a comparative study across
seven countries to investigate the reasons. Chosen because of their different
diets, combined with the fact that they were all rural labourers, over 12,000
men between 40 and 59 years old, from 16 communities in Italy, the Greek
islands, Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Finland, Japan and the United States were
monitored over several decades. This pioneering survey, for the first time,
discovered the links between heart disease, cholesterol and diet.
Initially, Keys
faced opposition from powerful lobbies in the American food industry, including
the National Dairy Council, and from several eminent nutritionists who were
irked by his outspoken assertions that the risks of heart attacks were
heightened by ?the North American habit for making the stomach a garbage
disposal unit for a long list of harmful foods.’ Tall and slim with a blunt but
generous manner, Keys was nicknamed ‘Mr. Cholesterol’ by the US press. In 1961,
he was featured on the cover of Time magazine.
Keys and his
wife had three children, a boy and two girls (one of whom was murdered whilst
on holiday in Jamaica in 1991). Probably by practising what he preached, Keys
lived a century, dying in Minneapolis just two months short of his 101st
birthday on November 20, 2004; his wife died, aged 97, in 2006.
Key’s theories
were again corroborated when, in 2010, UNESCO added the Mediterranean diet to
its List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the first traditional
food practice to appear on the international list.
The
Ancel Keys Living Museum of the Mediterranean Diet, in Pioppi, is open to the
public. It houses a documentary, photograph and film archive regarding the
historic, scientific and cultural background of the Mediterranean Diet as well
as a library. For further information, go to
http://dietamediterranea.it/museodoc.htm. Closer to Florence, the Living Museum
of the Mediterranean Diet of Lucca was opened in July 2007. To book a visit,
telephone: +39 0583 385849 or contact info@alimentidellamediterranea.it.
