Whenever people tell me that Italians mostly eat carbs (I think Americans in particular imagine double servings of pasta at every meal) I want to pull out the Talismano della Felicita’. Lo conosci? Based on a recipe book from the early 20th C and much closer to a traditional Italian diet than most contemporary cookbooks. It’s full of recipes for brains, liver… you name it. Not low-carb specifically but definitely makes ample use of animal products, and I think the main cooking fat in the recipes is lard. My mother grew up in a small town in southern Italy and her family owned a farm. They killed a pig every fall, and she remembers blood pudding, lots of sausages, liver wrapped in pancetta…
There’s less food overall - just smaller portions than in the US- sweets were a much more rare treat, and most of my relatives have never had much more than coffee for breakfast, so even with some starches, anyone even moderately active probably spent a fair amount of time naturally in ketosis.
Longo's Longevity Diet
Yeah Il Talismano della Felicità is a great book. And I was raised too with the weekly veal liver and the occasional brains,.even if I am a town girl from the north, and from another generation.
Its quite impossible to streamline Italian cooking into anything because it’s really various and changes a lot region to region. In general though, people used to eat and still eat quite sumptuously. And I am not sure that they could be taken as a model of healthy dieting or longevity. I mean, of my grandparents, 3 died relatively young. The generation that did the two wars was quite deranged health-wise.
This said I checked and Valter Longo comes from Genoa, which is a coast town, and people living on the coast do tend to eat fish often. And Liguria is a quite frugal region, caught between sea and mountains, so maybe Longo’s granny did actually eat that way most of the time, it can’t be excluded. Although the old generations did usually fuck it up in some way, like I said, eating usually too much, that generation was very traumatized by the two wars and the lack of food during them. They’re not necessarily the role model that your grannies maybe are in US. A lot of them only had to do without coffee and sugar for a few years but for an Italian this is already a lot to bear, ha ha!
@Madeleine @margot17 the film “The Big Fat Fix” made by the director of Cereal Killers and released in 2016, goes to Italian seaside/Salerno and examines the traditional mediterranean way of eating vs. the modern American version of it. Asseem Malhotra MD (cardiologist) talks a lot about his “Pioppi Protocol” based on the traditional low carb/non-grazing/minimal desserts Italian seaside way of eating etc. I enjoyed those parts of the film the most!
Thanks I will check it out
I’m not sure how they turned Pioppi in a low carb paradise, as in the area of Salerno and Naples they eat mountains of carbs.
It is all explained in the Pioppi Diet book - and an excellent book it is. Perfect to introduce to a newbie low carber, with its ideas of real food, active lifestyle (that is gardening, and not driving everywhere, so definitely not the modern obsession with gym, cardio and resistance).
If I needed to introduce a single source to a newcomer, who wanted a genuinely healthy, non-wacky, long term lifestyle with massive health benefits, then the Pioppi book would be the best choice I know. And it is certainly a great deal more approachable, appetising and non-extreme than pescatarian vegan with 5 extended Fasting Mimicking bursts a year.
I still maintain that Pioppi cannot possibly be a low carb village, because that is not just culturally possible, that region of all is loaded with pasta and bread.
This doesn’t mean that the diet book is not amazing.
Btw 89 years life expectancy in Pioppi, even if proved, would not be super-amazing as in Italy as a whole the life expectancy is of 83.5 years, and that includes people dying young for car crashes etc. so yeah getting beyond 85 is a normal thing.
As I said, it is all explained in the book, but it would be a pity if people were put off a sensible, helpful book because areas surrounding Pioppi are thought to eat a lot of carbs.
I do wish that people would refrain from rubbishing an information source before they have even read it.
When I first saw mention of The Pioppi Diet, my first instinct was ‘Sigh! Yet another trend led celebrity diet book. Yawn.’
Fortunately, I actually read the thing before telling people what I ‘thought’.
Having done so, I was pleasantly surprised and am happy to recommend it, since it is eminently common sense and useful as an intro to low carbing. Worlds away from my uninformed first impression.
Sorry but the claim about Pioppi being low carb, I don’t need to read the book to say it’s BS.
It’s called Pioppi diet and it’s low carb, that’s enough knowledge about that idea being BS.
I agree with Madeleine that saying italian cooking is all about pasta, is restrictive. This doesn’t mean that there is anything low carb about it, especially if you look at southern cooking. And what’s the need btw? can’t a book about low carb stand on its own right without talking incorrectly of a small unimportant village whose relevance has already been blown out of proportion by an american dude who btw is one of low carb’s biggest anti-heroes?
Anyway, I made my point. The diet may still be valuable even if based on fantasy. It’s not a great start.
Like I said a few posts ago, italian woe cannot be easily streamlined. Still low carb is really the last place to look.
For quite a while, I was a Longo groupie: I committed as much of his TedTalks & Youtube interviews to memory as possible, read most of his book, etc. While reading his book, I was disappointed to find that he is as human as the rest of us 
And, like us, is subject to his unique frame of reference or bias, if you prefer.
My understanding and perspective is Longo began his life long passion for longevity as a child with the death of his grandfather. He grew up in a Blue Zone and studied Blue Zones throughout the world. He sought out unique populations whose clearly had a longevity advantage despite poor dietary and health habits (smoking, drinking, etc). The diet he recommends is the prevailing diet of his personal Blue Zone and heritage. However, his work with fasting and FMD is fantastic and gives all of us much hope for serious diseases like cancer, MS, and others.
Most of us here are coming from a totally different frame of reference and grew up in Metabolically Deranged Zone with a Standard American Diet and personal histories of chronic metabolic diseases. We couldn’t be more different from Longo’s origins and focus that beings from another galaxy. After 40+ years of SAD, I’m not sure ANY diet makes me a candidate for remarkable longevity but Keto is dramatically improving my health in all ways in a matter of months.
I am grateful for Longo’s work and look forward to more of his research results. Aspects of it have applicability to most of us. I especially would like to try to develop my own FMD (can we start a thread on this?) using his macros since water fasting is literally painful for me and I’ll take any autophagy I can get!
I am deeply thankful for the Keto lifestyle and this community for helping me turn my health around. This is where I belong and I will make use of any other tools developed by other researchers that may enhance my journey. There is room enough for many more gifted people to help us.
Here’s what Longo advises in his book: “Aim for a diet that is close to 100 percent plant- and fish-based, limiting fish consumption to two or three portions a week… If you are past age sixty-five and start to lose muscle mass, strength, and weight, introduce more fish…along with other animal-based foods commonly consumed by populations with record longevity, like eggs and certain cheeses (preferably feta or pecorino) and yogurt made from goat’s milk…”
Following that, he says to “minimize bad fats,” by which, of course, he means saturated fat. Then he says to choose foods from your ancestry. I take issue with all of this, but just those last two points are a good place to start. First, we know that saturated fat is not a “bad fat” and in fact that eating saturated fat is associated with better cardiovascular and brain health.
Second, he tells everyone to eat like certain Italian populations, then says to follow your ancestry. It’s a bit contradictory. What if my ancestry was Inuit? Masai? Or Irish and German (which it is), neither of which featured any of the specific foods he names other than fish.
It feels to me as I read the book that he’s made a giant leap from mouse and cellular-level studies to these “Blue Zone” long-lived populations to come up with his diet. Why haven’t any of the Blue Zone populations been any of the so-called “primitive” cultures? I realize that Native American groups have been decimated and that there may well no longer be even pockets of Native Americans who have been able to maintain anything like a traditional diet, but there are apparently other groups around the world still following their ancestral diet and living long, healthy lives.
In The Big Fat Surprise, Nina Teicholz writes that a British director of nutrition research in the early 1900s was “deeply impressed by the health and vigour of…Sikhs and the Hunzas,” who didn’t suffer from cancer, peptic ulcer, dental decay, were long-lived and had “good physiques.” This man found he could reproduce in mice the ill-health seen in Western populations by feeding a diet low in milk and meat, which is what the healthy Sikhs and Hunzas lived on.
She also notes that between 1898 and 1905, a physician/anthropologist produced a 460-page report for the Smithsonian Institute, in which he noted that "the elders among the Native Americans he visited would likely have been raised on a diet of predominantly meat… " and, “they seemed to be spectacularly healthy and lived to a ripe old age. The incidence of centenarians among these Native Americans was, according to the 1900 US Census, 224 per million men and 254 per million women, compared to nly 3 and 6 per million…in the white population.”
The entire Blue Zone effort seems to be a little simplistic - they don’t seem to have looked beyond the most obvious examples of long-lived populations, or looked into the historical records for information like this.
I also wanted to note one point about the entire longevity issue - he is focused on long, HEALTHY life, not just extending life. That’s his entire point with the fasting mimicking diet.
And, finally, I heard in an episode of Tim Ferris’ podcast, that Peter Attia had created a keto-friendly meal plan for the fasting-mimicking diet. It was an interview with Kevin Rose, who is a patient of Attia’s. He suggested in the interview that the plan be posted in the show notes, but I can’t find it.
Ever heard of irony? I’m guessing not… naming a low carb diet after the village where the anti low carb guy made his Italian home …
Why are you so angry and why do you have to be right?
Well I do find it ironic that someone should be so dumb as to look for a low carb paradise in the south of Italy.
Maybe that irony is lost on you guys, it’s as if a vegetarian went to Texas.
Btw I am not angry.
I think finding your own blue zones, in territories you actually know, and ancestors you actually have some relationship with, is a brilliant idea.
Like @MarkGossage I am very puzzled by your posts. And I agree with him that they appear angry. This may not be your intention, but that is how they look.
I am happy to disagree with you on anything you want, since I am comfortable in my views (having read the book in question) but I find it unfortunate that you have now spent several posts slamming a book you have obviously not read.
Anyway, enough on a pointless argument, and apologies from me to @peggaloon for derailing your Longo thread with such bickering. I won’t respond to Margot again, no matter the provocation.
So now I’m dumb… wow you are a charmer… and you have been here for all of 3 weeks…
Thank you. David Pegg, for being so respectful of Longo. I love people being open for opposing views.
I said that the author was dumb, not you.
I actually don’t understand you guys reactions. If we were talking of a detail in american or english culture that I don’t know much about, and I was hanging on some claims of a book I read, and someone local told me, look that’s really not true, I would be happy to know.
One thing is admitting, like Madeleine was saying, that it’s very reductive to think of italians as pasta-eaters. Another thing is wanting them to be low carb just for the drift of contradicting Keyes. Well it so happens that Keyes Mediterranean diet is way more on target, when it comes to that particular area and demographics and timeline in Italy. Does it matter? heck no. Pioppi is not the thing Keyes and you guys make it to be, there are plenty of villages here and there in Italy with their crown of centenaries, some of them smoke really stinky cigars and drink like sponges, or eat a pastry every day after lunch, you wouldn’t wanna do what they do just because it worked for them.
And the conversation applies to Longo too. True there are similarities between his longevity diet and the mediterranean diet, but saying that he elaborated his diet in that particular way because he’s italian is I think a misunderstanding, because these diets are not representaive in any way of the italian woe, if such a thing even exists, given that there are very big differences according to area and demographics. Usually, as I said, italians eat much more sumptuously than that. You have no idea to what extent that goes because it’s hardly believable even to me. My grandparents ate all their lives meals of 5-6 courses twice a day, and that was not a rare thing by any means.
So ok, you’re welcome to go on writing on things you don’t know anything about and then get pissed if someone corrects them. I know what I wrote.
I’ll just refer you to @SlowBurnMary 's post up the thread a bit where she explains what the guy who actually wrote the book and his movie about it reported. Then maybe you will understand.
“The film “The Big Fat Fix” made by the director of Cereal Killers and released in 2016, goes to Italian seaside/Salerno and examines the traditional mediterranean way of eating vs. the modern American version of it. Asseem Malhotra MD (cardiologist) talks a lot about his “Pioppi Protocol” based on the traditional low carb/non-grazing/minimal desserts Italian seaside way of eating etc. I enjoyed those parts of the film the most!”
Have you lived in or visited Pioppi? I’m guessing no but you are happy to denigrate the guy who has… bye…
Yes I am italian, born in Italy, lived in Italy for many years, I have visited the area of Salerno several times, because it happens to be close to the Amalfi coast where I used to go regularly, and it also happens, together with Naples, to be a peculiar place, and I have friends who come from there. And I repeat what I have been saying, these people that have examined the traditional mediterranean woe as it’s eaten in that area and have concluded there’s something low carb about it, are MISTAKEN.
That’s all I’ve been saying…
The cardiologist from Cape Town got enamored with a juicy idea, because we all know that Keyes is the low carb movement archi-enemy, but I am sorry, that is just a dumb idea. I do agree that the mediterranean diet is a very streamlined version of what these people actually eat, and I’ve been saying all along that streamlining the thousands version of italian woe is a futile endeavor, but I don’t agree that there’s anything low carb about the real thing. You could say that maybe, just going for broad strokes, italians tend to eat a balanced diet, but southerners especially will not pass a day without a pasta. Let alone bread. In fact, mind you, in that area you can find more easily than in the north people with visceral fat. Panzoni, as we call them. So, no, it’s incorrect, mistaken, dumb, misinformed.
There may be wonderful proteic food in that area, like in other areas of Italy for that matter, but that’s because there are thousands of variations of food available you cannot possibly track, and among them great many proteic foods. You cannot overstate italian obsession for food. For sure the people of the book and the movie will not have found a hard time in isolating this or that brilliant proteic food and write a story about it, but that doesn’t mean anything about the woe, which I repeat is really a thousand miles from being low carb. So adopt the recipes if you like them, but that’s as far as it goes.
In Italy the so-called “piatto unico” is a fairly recent invention. We normally eat at least two courses, il primo e il secondo. The first is pasta or rice or soup usually, the second is proteins. They are not usually put together like in SAD, meat and potatoes in the same plate. Not even very poor people do that. So it’s enough to gather a bunch of recipes of secondi to conclude that italians are low carb but it’s just not correct. It is true that nowadays people eat 1/4 of what they used to, so sometimes, for ex for lunch, especially if it’s hot, the primo is skipped, but in that case they’ll go heavy with bread, which, contrarily to the custom of other countries, is always eaten together with meals and for this also served in abundance at the restaurant.
Also btw, as it’s been mentioned, there’s no such thing as gardening in the south. You do attend to the “orto”. Gardening is good in England, where IT RAINS.
Ah and the no-dessert idea is really also a fantasy. There are AMAZING desserts coming from there. If they make them, they eat them too, you know… Besides, have those authors checked HOW MANY TEASPOONS OF SUGAR they put in their coffee? many many many…and the coffee is sacred after lunch, you don’t skip it for any reason, they put the sugar directly in the moka, stir and drink. It’s as sweet as chocolate, and really tasting amazing. It’s also a sugar storm we keto people would never come out of alive.
I wish the cardiologist from Cape Town had written about the biltong, a south-african dry meat which seems to be amazing, it’s not a bad idea to talk of things you have a chance to actually KNOW WELL.