Daily Marketing and the Fountain of Youth
Italians have always had a reputation for good health and longevity, and their Mediterranean diet is now celebrated as one of the healthiest ways we can eat. Italians shop daily for fresh fruit, bread, vegetables, meat, and fish. This simple way of life for Italians is a deeply ingrained habit that is also supported by science to promote overall health and well-being.
First, freshness is an important factor in better health. You’re more likely to consume ingredients you shop for daily, which maintains their optimal nutrition content. Zero-kilometer veggies and fruit are nutrient-rich. “I would define a healthy diet in much the same way. If your diet is mostly composed of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains—plus, I would add beans, nuts, seeds, and drinking water—you cannot go too far wrong,” notes Dr. David Katz, a nutrition expert at Yale University. The longer foods sit on a shelf or in a fridge, the more nutrients they lose. We should buy foods that “Our great-grandparents would also have recognized as food. So they look like vegetables, fruits, grains, beans, lentils, nuts… and dairy and eggs and fish and seafood too, albeit in smaller quantities, but real food, Dr. Katz concludes, “[Not] like something that comes in a box with an ingredient list that runs off the package. By buying and eating them daily, you’re optimizing your intake of these crucial nutrients.”
Shopping in season also helps diversify your plant-based diet. Italians always shop in season. Asking for strawberries in December can get you kicked out of a restaurant! Eating produce in season also means eating them at their peak nutritional content. Eating only what is available in the market encourages dietary variety, which is also beneficial as different foods provide varying amounts of key nutrients. “That is a largely-plant-based diet comprised mostly of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts, and seeds. We are best nurtured from nature,” adds Dr. Katz. Dietary diversity is a key element of overall diet quality and is associated with better health outcomes.
Surprisingly, daily shopping also promotes portion control. We tend to eat more than necessary when we stock up on food. You’re less likely to overeat if you consume only what you purchase for the day. Dr. Andrew Weil, a world-renowned leader and pioneer in integrative medicine, points out, “The only food group you don’t have to worry about over-consuming is vegetables, provided they aren’t drenched in oil or butter.” Portion control is a fundamental aspect of healthy eating. The Italian tradition of buying food daily helps ensure you’re only eating what you need.
Have you seen the 90-year-old Nonna shopping at her local market on your visits to Italy? She wasn’t putting on a show just for you. Think decades of daily walking to the market and home again with heavy bags of fresh food up and down stairs, hills, and steep cobblestone streets. The cardio and musculoskeletal system benefits over time are significant.
The habit of daily shopping involves strenuous walking, sometimes many kilometers per day. “People think that exercise is for someone younger or more athletic. They think it’s about going to the gym or running, which turns many people off. People are afraid of the word “exercise.” I think referring to it as “physical activity” is better. Physical activity is any body movement that’s generated by a muscle. Physical activity is anything that gets you moving. It’s for everyone, and it doesn’t have to be intentional exercise,” says Dr. I-Min Lee, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
The benefits of shopping daily are widely supported by research. A 2005 study concluded that “Dietary diversity had an inverse association with metabolic syndrome.” This suggests that a “higher dietary diversity, therefore, might be associated with lower possibility of having some metabolic disorders.” Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of factors that increase type-2 diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. In addition, a 2022 study confirmed that brisk walking has been shown to improve cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular strength, and body composition.
While daily shopping for fresh food is common in Italy, it’s not exclusive to Italian culture. Countries through the Mediterranean Basin have their own daily marketing traditions. The good news? No matter where you are, you can make this tradition yours. Find a local market and walk there if you can. No local markets?
Consider walking to the grocery store or shopping for only what you need that day. Stay away from the processed food aisles and concentrate on increasing your consumption of fresh veggies, fruits, and loaves of bread and try to limit meals with meat and fish to once a week. We’re not suggesting anyone become a vegetarian or make any drastic changes to their diet without consulting their doctor, but we can say that emulating the Italian habit of shopping for fresh food daily and incorporating a Mediterranean-style diet does have real health benefits.
A 2018 study published in The Lancet lists Italy as one of the countries with the highest healthy life expectancy. Italy is also home to one of the world’s Blue Zone, where populations have an extraordinarily high life expectancy. Author Dan Buettner has written extensively on the benefits of the Italian way of shopping and eating. “The people in the blue zones live up to a decade longer than average Americans and spend a fraction of what most [of] the rest of us do on health care,” Buettner says.
The benefit of shopping like an Italian is more than just a charming local practice; it has strong scientific evidence to back it up. Shopping daily and in season helps provide us with dietary diversity from food at its peak nutritional levels. Preparing only the food we intend to eat that day also helps with portion control, and finding ways to include physical activity into our days, either when shopping or just moderate walking instead of jumping in the car to go a few blocks, is something we should all do more. Lastly, remember to enjoy your food and the people you spend time eating it with. Daily socialization has enormous benefits, and balanced with a positive approach to food offers sustainable and pleasurable pathways to a longer, happier life.
