Food of the rich and the phenomenology of Berrino.
I know that everything comes from a minister who was explaining an Anglo-Saxon reality, and therefore I'm not going to explain how the hell they are eating in Anglo-Saxon countries. And it doesn't even make sense to explain how people eat in place
I haven't met many centenarians. Only three, including my grandmother, who died at 101. Well, to be honest, I can say one thing: they ate whatever the fuck they wanted. My grandmother had no idea what a carbohydrate or a "processed" food was, she simply told you whether she liked it or not.
But the thing I wanted to focus on is the economic aspect. If you read Berrino's recommendations, that is, you discover that to "eat well" according to him, you must:
- Go shopping every three days. What's more, all the fresh things he recommends you eat won't survive, even in the fridge.
- Spend 2/3 times more than average on food. Between fish and all the other things he recommends, if we don't want them "ultra-processed", we get double or triple the price.
- Have two/three hours of time a day to cook the things Berrino recommends, because at the end of the day, the "rawer" the material, the more time it takes to make it edible. Unless you live on salads.
So if you are very wealthy, and have a lot of time, and don't mind going to the shops/markets every two or three days, everything is fine. But those who work will normally not be able to do much.
The evidence comes simply from the fact that the little shops and open-air markets are closing. It doesn't take a genius to understand that if these little shops close then few people go there. And so, for some reason people don't go there.
And don't tell me that supermarkets are convenient, because between leaving and parking, in a big city, you're in deep shit. Unless you do like here in Germany, where they have medium-sized supermarkets that place you everywhere in the city. But let's also remember that for demographic reasons, there will always be old people who are crazy about Matjes.
Ultimately, that is, Berrino is a classic example of why "only the rich eat healthily in Italy (and probably throughout the West)".
This is probably the reason why he is so hated: he behaves like someone who said "if the poor don't have bread, let them eat brioches" (we know it wasn't Poumpadour who said it, but someone will have it said). The problem, however, is its scientific nature.
You will say “but he is an expert! He's qualified!”. Obvious. But not everyone who knows can also explain. I don't know if HE is any good as a scientist. I say that the things he writes are poorly written. It's different.
First of all, I notice a certain simplism. In the sense that according to Berrino, it's simple. It is enough that the food is not too "processed", that it is "fresh" enough, that there are enough "vegetables", "legumes", etc.
So far so good. But they are simplistic recipes. Let's take the "trial" for example. When is food too "processed", for Berrino? The answer is “It depends on Berrino, and on Berrino, and on Berrino”.
Because he would like the wheat and flour unprocessed, but at the same time he doesn't want to get hurt by the Ergot, or the Baccillus Cereus. So we must stop at a level of "industry abstention" that at the same time allows the flour to be not too processed (according to Berrino), but processed enough to be safe. After all, fresh vegetables and fruit must also be fresh, but Berrino doesn't want to get sick with shigella, and so on. The bar of the industrial process, or at least of the supply chain, cannot be set to zero. Otherwise you will have to boil everything, and this is not very good with "fresh".
If Berrino standards existed, i.e. there were reproducible quality standards for “unprocessed” or “sparsely processed” or “fresh”, and all the other things that Berrino requires, they could be imposed as industrial standards. It would be enough to ban overly processed foods, as Berrino says.
But if we ask the industry to avoid overly “processed” foods, we will get the industry asking us: “here are the 17955 known industrial food processes. Can you explain to us which ones are -too much-, and where is the limit?”.
And our legislator would probably be able to make a decent law, in scientific terms, with a round table of experts. But the problem is that no ordinary person could do it.
Saying to avoid "overly processed" foods, since the word "too" is a quantitative limit, is not a very scientific way of speaking. It's a completely flat-rate way of telling people “if it seems too industrial, avoid it”.
And this achieves nothing: at that point the same industrial stuff will be served to you in a cane basket, and it will NEVER seem "too industrial" to you.
In short, these “fresh” requirements are simply the berrino requirements. Fresh is what Berrino says is fresh. And if you don't buy a Berrino breed dog to take to the supermarket, you won't know exactly what is processed and what isn't.
This habit of Berrinological parameters, i.e. parameters that only make sense in Berrino's head, is becoming endemic. Why is it becoming endemic? Because it allows the non-scientific treatment of topics which for the industry should not become scientific.
For example, the “Mediterranean” diet. As soon as we say it, the Italians stand up, convinced that we are talking about Italy. But if we look carefully at a map, France is also in the group, as are Israel, Turkey and Egypt, but also Greece and Algeria. Who are we talking about, exactly?
But what is “Mediterranean” then? Is the Adriatic Mediterranean? And the Black Sea? What is the precise parameter? If we ordered the food industry and restaurants to conform to the “Mediterranean diet,” what exactly would we be asking for? Imagine having to write the law with your own hands.
This is the point: all these names and labels, ranging from "Mediterranean" to "Poly processed" to "fresh", up to "made in Italy", serve to shift attention from the content of the food to some label attached at a flat rate.
And in this, Berrino excels. Fresh vegetables range from stuff grown in a greenhouse in Holland to freshly picked tomatoes from the garden. You can't tell me that they are the same thing, because I can perceive with my senses, even without being an expert, that they are different.
What, then, is “fresh vegetables”? What are “dried legumes”? Dried how, exactly?”. If we had to give a technical specification to the industry, how would you describe them?
This is the unscientific nature of the Berrino method: using words with meanings that cannot be precisely qualified. In order to leave room for that industry that Berrino apparently says to avoid.
For example, right now some red lentils are cooking in my small rice cooker. Apparently I did what Berrino says. When they're done cooking, they'll be delicious too.
Everyone knows what an amazing thing Chernobyl red lentils are.
Sure, it's exaggerated, but the problem is that saying “red lentils” without even defining a maximum limit for any substance that can pollute them is absurd, and that's why I mentioned Chernobyl. It's obvious that lentils are not radioactive, but if you asked me how much "unprocessed" is in the fact that the bag was packaged in a "protective atmosphere", like all dried legumes and rice, I wouldn't know. answer.
I don't want to be a metaphysical philosopher and ask you "yes, but what are lentils? How many properties can I take away from a lentil before it stops being a lentil?”. But I can ask myself, as a consumer, where it should come from. For example, it's clear that lentils shouldn't come from Chernobyl, but is Cinisello Balsamo okay? And Casalecchio di Reno? And Butera?
Berrinism does not answer these questions: it tells me that it is healthy to eat legumes, including lentils, but God knows what a healthy lentil is, exactly.
Oh yes. Since Berrino is an epidemiologist, he probably wouldn't be able to answer my questions.
Sic transeat….