Sheep To Slaughter wrote:
Even Mediterranean cultures eat far more animal and butter fat than olive oil.
With respect to butter this is false. For example in Spain most people don't use butter at all. They put olive oil and tomato on toast, bake with oil, cook fish in oil, etc. Butter is just not used that much.
Animal fat, on the other hand, is consumed with joy. Pigs' feet, pig's ears, a bit of fatback in the lentils, a bit of fatback in the beans, a bit of sobrasada for a sandwich, a bit of chorizo with cheese for dinner, ... but they eat less beef than Americans, and more fish, pig, lamb, rabbit, etc. ... Of course this may just reflect that they cook all those things well and have no clue how to cut or cook beef.
The whole mediterranean diet thing got a bit overblown. Spaniards and Italians are getting fatter too. The older generation consists of people who survived the post war starvation. They are robust, and grew up not eating much. The younger generations are coke guzzling slobs just like Americans.