Iona Napier
THEY say you are what you eat and Spanish people take great pride in delicious cuisine.
But new research from Nestle suggests Spaniards don’t realise just how bad some of their eating habits are.
While 70% believe they eat very well, nine in ten do not eat a proper breakfast, if at all.
And seven out of ten do not consume five small meals per day – the recommended food intake – while one in six miss at least one meal a day completely.
The Spanish eat a whopping 2.5 times the recommended amount of red meat and 65% of those interviewed eat either no fish or less than the recommended intake.
Almost three quarters of the population do not drink the eight glasses of water each day that the heat demands, although 82% believe they do!
And with a quarter of Spaniards sleeping less than seven hours a night, is it a surprise that other habits creep in?
They have the last laugh, however, since Spain has the highest life expectancy in Europe with Spanish women living the second longest in the world after the Japanese.
Nestle, that great bastian. Not.
“Five small meals a day”? there would be no time to do anything else. Sounds like Nirvana for the Billy Bunters of this world.
So if these statistics are true, there has to be another reason for Spanish longevity other than diet. Got to be worth sussing it out, then everyone could have some. It certainly isn’t refraining from tobacco use that keeps ’em alive.
Lots of fallacies in this article.
The Spanish probably eat more pork (white meat) than anyone in the world, it used to bemuse me that while waiting in the queue to get served I have seen people buy practically the whole pig including all the most fatty parts and veal.
Anecdotal but interesting, a Spanish friend told me about a restaurant that closed down before we arrived in Guadix. Some Argentinians opened a beefsteak restaurant and the Argies do know all about prime beef, it did’nt stay open long – the locals would’nt use it – veal or nothing. You cannot compare a well hung piece of beef and veal.
The stats about longevity are about the existing elderly who for most of their lives had a very frugal Med type diet, lots of exercise – they walked and it was not common for Spanish women to smoke. Let’s see what the stats are in another 50 years. I saw in less than 2 years in Galicia the females especially putting on the weight, same in Andalucia.
I’m surprised that anyone sleeps 7 hours a night in southern Spain simply because of the total lack of insulation or correct building materials used in construction. If I got 2 hours a night sleep in the 5-6 summer months in Guadix I was lucky and that was from 4-6AM. A/C is a terrible way to get more sleep, stripping all the humidity from the air supply (rocks in the nose).
I’m sure that is why it is impossible to buy fresh bread in Guadix before 9.30AM and is probably the reason that most shops don’t open until 10AM.