The much praised Mediterranean diet – relying on fresh fruits and vegetables – is being discarded by consumers in the countries where it was created, the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organisation has found.


The FAO has warned that growing prosperity in southern Europe, and to some extent the Levant and north Africa, has led locals to eat fattier, more calorific foods.


FAO senior economist Josef Schmidhuber said the Mediterranean diet has “decayed into a moribund state”.


Schmidhuber said statistical analysis shows that, from 1962-2002, daily calorie intake in the 15 countries forming the European Union before 2004 rose 20% – but in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Malta, it increased 30%.

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