The Mediterranean Diet revisited

Back in 2005 I wrote an article for a British magazine about the diet and longevity of the Cretan population. On hearing recently that Greece is set to top next years European obsesity tables I thought to check out what I had written all those years ago so I dug it out this morning and oddly prescient it proves to have been.

Given that the original work that gave rise to the notion of "The Mediterranean Diet" as being a healthy lifestyle choice was undertaken on Crete some 40 years ago perhaps this reprint might prompt some further thought on diet in general.

Rather than update the piece as a whole let me just note a few developments since the original publication:
Starbucks and McDonalds have opened here;
food shops carry much more processed and convenience food than heretofore;
internet gaming cafes have become prevalent;
many of the traditional eating patterns have been disrupted;
Pavlos died peacefully last year of heart failure;
Jiannis still cycles to and from the village most days.

Here is the original article:

THE CRETAN DIET AND LONG LIFE

The grapes are in. The proto raki is ready. The olives are clearly visible on the trees, their leaves showing silver in the autumn breezes. Georgi Nikolarakis leans back on his chair and smiles, his eyes light up. Here is a man about to mount a hobby horse. The Cretans like little better than holding forth: unless it is eating. Of course this inevitably means that they have learned to combine the two. Given that the topic here is food then we have a pretty perfect discourse coming.
Georgi, an avuncular man with a full beard and a weather beaten complexion, opened his taverna back before Georgioupolis was a tourist destination, when only independent travellers and beleagured hippies turned up at this end of the 11 mile beach that is the Gulf of Almyros.

"Why," I have asked him "do Cretans live so long?"

"Maybe they do and maybe they don't. The last generation lived longer than my generation and as for the kids today --- who knows: they eat so much rubbish! When I was a child my mother would give me stakka for my breakfast: spread on a slice of black bread. Only rich people had white bread. (Stakka is the solidified cream from sheeps milk and is something like condensed milk but stronger in flavour. All brown breads in Crete are called black.). If I was lucky I'd have honey spread on top. My aunty used to live in Xania (the nearest city) and sometimes she would bring white bread for us, it was a special treat but Mikhaili's mother, Mikhaili from Creta Corner, used to bake a bread from rye that had lots of hard bits in it and all the kids would smell it from far away and come and beg for it. Bread is at the centre of every Cretan meal. Bread and olives. And salad. Fresh salad from the garden."

The garden in a Cretan village home is always given over to herbs, vegetables, fruits. and salad crops. The flowers are grown in tubs, pots, old tins. The soil is reserved for things you can eat: and that includes chickens and maybe even a pig. The flowers are extraordinarily well cared for, dazzlingly beautiful, and ingeniously grown but the garden is strictly reserved for edibles.

"The workers in the villages," Georgi continues, "often started the day with no more than a hunk of bread, some olives and a glass of malotiras (mountain tea). And then they would go off to work with maybe a piece of cheese and another hunk of bread in their pockets. You remember Pavlos? Pavlos the drinker. He was a big drinker. He was always in Tito's: always drinking wine but he always had bread and some cheese in his pocket that he would eat while he was drinking. When he was eighty some he was knocked down by a car; they said he was drunk but when wasn't he? When he died they cut him up and the doctors said he had the liver of an eighteen year old. Even my granny who was 106 and a teetotaller had a glass of wine with her breakfast: fresh juices and a glass of wine. She married my grandfather when he was 82 and she was 28 and they had 5 children - all healthy. The stakka, is good for the potency. So are artichokes; you just pull off the spiky leaves and eat the artichoke raw with lemon and salt. They turn your lips and tongue brown and they make you windy but they are good for the heart and the potency."

What about meat? Does meat play a big part in Cretan diet? Lamb is eaten everywhere in tavernas but what of the village people? Do they eat much meat?

"Mountain people have always eaten meat once a week and fish once a week. And snails. Snails are good for cancer: it's the calcium. Do snails count as meat? Most families would have a cow or two and some chickens and maybe a pig. And when you kill an animal you eat everything. You don't waste anything and you don't feed bits of the dead animal to the other animals like they did in England. Look what that got them. Now, with the common market, it's become more difficult. Rules about who can kill animals makes it difficult. I would never eat the liver and spleen from a butcher shop animal. I don't know what it's been eating. When your neighbour killed out a pig or a goat you knew it was clean. The same with the chickens. Why are chickens in supermarkets all the same size? Why am I not allowed to buy eggs from my neighbour? I know his chickens are happy and properly free range. It makes me angry, you know, when English people say Greek food is greasy. Look at all the dead animal fat they put into their gravy for the Sunday roast. Here in Crete we have the best olive oil in the whole world and that's what we cook with."

So what do they eat when they aren't eating meat? The Italians have their pasta, the Indians their rice, and the Irish have their potatoes. What are the staples of the Cretan diet?

"We still have seasonal eating here you see. Soups and pulses in the winter and fruits and vegetables in the summer. When things are in season you eat them. People forget how many soups we eat. In the winter we have bean soups (such as fassoulatha made with harricot beans), chick pea soups, lentil soup (fakes) , potato and leek soup. In summer we might have tomato or chicken with rice and lemon, - not so heavy. Once, some years ago there was a monk here from a Russian monastery. He had pure white hair and a big white beard like your Santa Claus. Here in the taverna. He was over a hundred and was on his first holiday. He had a translator with him. He asked for soup and I told him we didn't have soup today. "Nonsense," he said "do you have onions? Courgettes? Potatoes? Garlic?" Of course I had all of them. "Well then", he announced, "you have soup. Twenty minutes is all it takes!" And so he had his soup and I ate with him and we drank a little raki together. He was a really interesting man. He had lived most of his life in a monastery but he knew about life".

This fascination with other peoples' lives and this willingness to sit and eat and drink with them while they tell their tales and put the world to rights is another central rite of the Cretan eating experience and one that Georgi is sure contributes to the well being and long life of the Cretans. A good meal with Cretans will take hours and sometimes drifts into the early hours without you noticing.

"It's not good for you, you know, all this sitting for five minutes in front of the television and wolfing food down. How can you enjoy it? If you do one thing then do it properly. If you are going to eat you sit down together and you eat what you need and you drink a little wine and you talk and then you have company and you feel good and if you feel good you live longer and you enjoy your life. Even the old people here feel useful and wanted. They have stories and they have wisdom. They know all of the herbs and fruits and potions that keep you healthy. They are always welcome to eat with you. They don't rush off for antibiotics when they don't feel so good. They'll make some tea with special herbs, maybe chamomile or wild marjoram or oregano or dikti , or they'll take some fish soup, or perhaps have a massage with the lamp oil or proto-raki. Petrol is best for the massage but dangerous...

As if to demonstrate, and in that magical mode of serendipity that seems to go with the langourous life in Crete, there is a shout from outside the taverna. Georgi's dad Pavlos has just walked down the mountain from his home in Mathes, maybe 6 or 7 kilometers, and asks if Georgi wants bread from the baker. Pavlos will buy a 2 kilo loaf and walk back home. Pavlos is 86. Of course, his friend Jiannis could have got the bread. He cycles up and down to Mathes every day on an old sit up beg bicyle with Sturmey Archer gears, but Pavlos doesn't like to take advantage. "He's an old man after all" - Jiannis is 88. At this point we finish our chat because Georgi is going to get some food for Pavlos to take back with him. A yiouvetsi, (lamb cooked with greek noodles) some lentil soup and a bowl of xorta, another of the magic ingredients of the Cretan diet. Xorta is a dish prepared from mountain greens: often cooked from 3 types of wild plant that grow freely on the mountainside and in the olive groves it is served with olive oil, lemon and oftentimes potatoes. "Since my mother died", says Georgi "my father doesn't bother much cooking for himself. I don't know what we'll do when he gets old".

The Elgin Marbles - the problem is in the plural

The new museum of the Acropolis in Athens is open now and it is, by all accounts, a truly wonderful building but the opening has been a sad occasion in one way. The so-called Elgin Marbles are still in London and there is no indication that "they" will ever be returned. And so, all of the old arguments have be rehashed and foisted upon us as if they were newly minted.

The story such as it is is simple: Athens was under Ottoman rule and the Ottomans were destroying a lot of the history that they found. The then British ambassador, said Lord Elgin, was a bit of a wily old Scot and so he knocked off a few chunks of marble from a magnificent frieze in order to decorate his own historic pile back in the UK. Sadly he ran into heavy financial waters and flogged them off to the British Museum at a knock down price. And there they remain to this day.

It occurs to me that a major part of the problem here is to do with language. Let me explain. All discussions of this thorny problem refer to either The Elgin Marbles or The Parthenon Marbles. Note the use of the plural: as if all of the fragments were stand alone pieces. Well, that just ain't so. The Parthenon frieze, from which these chunks of carved pentellic marble were ripped untimely, was and is a single work of art. It was designed as a single piece. It was executed as a single piece. And until Elgin's hired vandals got to work it had remained a single piece for several centuries.

Imagine if Elgin or one of his fellow ambassadors had cut the face out of the Mona Lisa and flogged it off to the National Gallery. Who could sensibly maintain that the 2 pieces should not be re-united?  No person in their right senses.

It's time to put back together what our forebears put asunder. There is NO reason not to and every reason so to do. And maybe if we all stop talking about the marbles (plural) and start talking about the Parthenon Frieze (singular) we shall all stop obscuring the real issue with a linguistic trick.

A New Short Story - part 7

Vantaris leaps into the churchyard where Gilbert waits with the ropes. Gilbert rubs his eyes and thinks immediately of the great god Pan -  the great god Pan is dead he repeats to himself.  "Which one?" Vantaris takes a short rope from the proffered bunch and hobbles the goat by its hind legs. He lifts the young goat from his shoulders like Jason removing the golden fleece and puts him gently down by the church door. The kid struggles briefly against the hobble which is attached to his upper thighs but soon settles. He pets the kid behind the ears before coming to sit himself beside Gilbert under the mulberry stand and pulls off his boots. He trousers are covered in burrs and grass darts, he is coated in a pale red dust but his smile is broad.  From his back pocket he pulls a crumpled red pack of Sante and offers one to Gilbert who scans the blonde woman on the box lid before taking one. They light their cigarettes and a silence descends as they savour the first hits of the smoke to their throats. "Tsikourdia?" asks Vantaris? "Why not?". Gilbert is still coming round. Vantaris strides over to the church door and reaches up above the door lintel  whence he produces a rather simple Yale type key. He opens the door and disappears into the gloom. emerging moments later with a plastic water bottle of clear spirit in his left hand and a long thin grey stone in his right.

They sip in turn from the tsikourdia, the native Cretan spirit. "OK Vantaris, what's the plan? Does the kid have to go to the vet in Vrysses? Becky will be expecting me back - can you manage now? You can give me the rope back on Thursday." Vantaris produces two knives from one of the infeasible number of pockets that beset his trousers, one of which Gilbert is sure he recognises. "That curved knife ..." "Yes, Becky gave it to me ... said it was her very first lavender knife ... said it was blunt now and you didn't know how to sharpen it ..." Vantaris strokes the curved blade carefully across the stone concentrating intently. "But her knife had a pale blonde handle ... beech I think ... but that one -  -  ..." Vantaris laughs but sticks at his task "Blood Gil, blood will darken wood ... I changed the tip a little ... reground it ... it is a wonderful knife for cutting throats now ...". Gilbert now looks carefully at the other knife and feels a prescient twist in his stomach - it is a skinning knife, of that there is no doubt. He looks at Vantaris who looks up, his task complete, and holds him with his dark brown eyes and nods. He takes up the second knife and reapplies both it and himself to the stone. "Not here surely?  ... the pappas will go berserk ..." Silence save for the blade on the stone, a distant cicada, the first Gilbert has heard this year, and a goat bell somewhere. Eventually Vantaris lays the knife and the stone to one side.   


"You think I care what some black shrouded eunuch thinks? With their new religion? With their canting? With their churches built of our stones? With their gospels written in our language?  You think I give a straw?  My people were killing animals here before their Jesus was born ... before the Ottomans ... before the Venetians even... before the siege of Troy ... back in the times of Minos ... long before that arch-clown Evans "discovered" Knossos and made of it some archaeological joke? My people were in Egypt mummifying their Pharoahs when the Jewses were captives, slaves. Fuck the preist ... and fuck the truck he drives in on." Vantaris laughs long and loud. "Hey Gil, you know Zeus was born here? Of course you know. Near Psiloritis. You know how we know? Because Zeus killed his father and fucked his sister - how could he be anything other than Cretan? A Sfakian."

"Enough?" he says waving the nearly empty bottle?" Gilbert nods assent and Vantaris gets up and puts the bottle and the stone back in the church, locks it, and puts the key back in its hiding place. He bends and strokes the neck of the goat that stands perfectly still. He looks across to Gilbert "Come on Gil ... killing time ... for Manousos's baptism"

A new short story - part 6

The incline is steep, Gilbert estimates perhaps 1 in 3, and soon his right leg has turned an icy cold. He is thankful for Vantaris' arm around him. "He was a big goat - massive eggs huh?" he turns and smiles at Vantaris who surprises him with a scowl. "The goat is strong ... plenty of power but ... but he only gets weaklings ... and his owner ... that Sifis ... he is a scoundrel ... is that correct? ... scoundrel? ... he has never served the same herd twice with that goat ... no repeat business ... but Sifis ships him around the island to poor goat herds who have not heard." "Scoundrel is a good word Vantaris, very good. And very apt."

The ice in Gilbert's leg has turned to hot needle points but he disregards it  -  they are entering the churchyard. Now they are in shade. "Give me a cigarette Gil." Gilbert reaches out a pack of Assos and they both light up, gulping the smoke hungrily and smiling. "How many packs these days Gil? When are you going to stop?" Vantaris' head jerks back and his full throaty laugh echoes off the church. "Did you write about the church yet? And the magic tree?"   "Not yet ... well yes ... and no ... we are writing it now ... one pack, perhaps one and a half ... two when you help ... and I'll stop smoking the day after I die ... come on ... tell me what you need the rope for ..." Vantaris puts a finger to his lips and cocks his head to one side to listen. "Sit down Gil and rest your leg ... you will see ..." And then he is gone, bounding up the sheer rock face among the goats, his ragged boot laces trailing him like the tails of Chinese stunt kites.


Gilbert wakes from a dreamless sleep. All Gilbert's sleeps are dreamless. He peers through the basketweave of the hat that covers his face and gently rouses himself. The sound of goat bells rings around his head. Removing the hat completely he is amazed to see that his legs are covered in softly yellow butterflies. He is entranced and beguiled by this gentle blanket that delicately takes to the air air as he stirs and shows a pale green underside. He thinks of Marquez and grins at how appropriate is the word butterfly for these beautiful insects the colour of unadulterated butter (Gonepteryx cleopatra - ) and wonders about the origins of the Greek word petaloutha. His Marquez moment is brutally broken by Vantaris' huge, bell-like voice, "Gil, get the rope ready". The sun has passed over and he can clearly see Vantaris loping down a near vertical slope with a brown kid held around his neck like a living shawl - he is holding all four of the kid's feet, two in each hand. "Look ma, no hands ...", Gil thinks.

. 

A new short story - part 5

It was the height that gave him the clue - Vantaris, son of Manousos. In London Gilbert had not considered himself to be tall but on moving here it soon became apparent that he was taller than most Greeks - even the men - sometimes by a head but Vantaris stands nearly 2 meters in his bare feet. Vantaris, barefoot, breaks into a trot and shouts and waves, "Gil, my friend, how are you? Do you have some rope?". He swoops down, lifts Gilbert bodily out of the trough and hugs him tight. Planting kisses on Gilbert's cheeks in turn he puts him down gently and asks again "Do you have rope my friend? In your fortigaki? I need some rope."  Gilbert grabbed Vantaris by the shoulder, "Wait, wait. How are your parents? You, I can see, are as hale as ever - you remember the word hale? And yes, I do have rope, in the back, behind the barrel". Vantaris hops up into the back of the little truck and Gilbert wonders again whether he wasn't part goat himself - surefooted, agile, and strong headed. Vantaris pulls the barrel that Gilbert uses as a tool box and roots around. "Where is it Gil? Yes, hale - it means I am in exceptional health and vigourous - from the Old English - aha -  eureka - I have found it." Gilbert  gives Vantaris an English lesson every week in a local cafe and Vantaris stubbornly tries to force Greek grammar into Gilbert's head. They drink frappe and they smoke and they laugh. "The family is well - you know we have a baptism soon? Little Manousos must have his name written in the book of life ..." his head thrown back he laughs ironically. He has a long length of rope wrapped around his hands and is testing its strength "Good rope Gil, you bought it here? Is there more? I need some more."

Gilbert has stepped back into the shade and eyes Vantaris through a pall of cigarette smoke, amazed at the energy of this young man and frankly envious of his rude fettle. "Plenty more - just look - what do you need it for?" Vantaris hops out of the truck and lands like a mature goat - rope in hand. "I have it Gil. Plenty of rope. Good rope too. Come on - you will help me." He drops down beside Gilbert and plunges his feet into the cold water in the trough oblivious of the wasps. "Come, I'll show you.Put your canisters in the truck. I'll help." Gilbert has accustomed himself over the years to this lack of please and thank you - the persistent and regular use of the imperative - but he still notices it. He grinds out the cigarette as Vantaris pulls on his dusty boots and soon they are climbing up the concrete incline to the churchyard, the canisters safely stowed. "Come Gil we have work to do. How is the lovely Becky? She is so beautiful. What she sees in an old man like you I can't imagine." He wraps his long arm around Gilbert's shoulder and seeps him along. A green Datsun truck sweeps past on the road below and a cloud of dust follows it. Standing in the back is a glossy black he-goat - Gilbert can see this much from where he stands.

A new short story - part 4

Gilbert puts the worn and dusty boots into a shady spot and goes back to the pick-up to get the canisters. The sun is high and he pushes the hat forward to cover his eyes. As he approaches the spring he notices that the outlet of the trough in front of the spring is blocked and the trough itself is overflowing. A cloud of wasps hovers above the surface and Gilbert's skin gooses. A cold shiver runs through him. Gilbert doesn't think that he is frightened of wasps but they do make him cringe. These wasps are his least favourite - the ones with the articulated bodies and the dangling legs (Note for those interested: Gilberts bete noir here is the European paper wasp ). It is the clean, running water that draws them to the spring and the hotter the day the more wasps gather and today is a very hot day - the 6th in a row. Gilbert fans the cloud of wasps away from the trough with his hat and notices that the sweat band is black with sweat. He bends, scoops up a hatful of the cold clear water and tips it over his head. He rubs his eyes clear, steps tentatively into the trough itself and starts filling the first of three canisters - an 8 liter red one. The cloud of wasps however has reformed and hovers but a foot away.

Gilbert stays perfectly still until the canister is full at which point he screws the top on and hastily lights a cigarette. The wasp cloud moves off left slightly and Gilbert sighs and begins to fill another canister. While he fills, he smokes. He is filling the last canister when a shadow falls into his peripheral vision. He looks around and sees a tall, bearded Sfakian coming toward him. He drops the cigarette in surprise and squints at the ambling figure approaching from the churchyard. He has been here long enough to know to treat all Sfakians with respect.

A new short story - part 3

Vantaris strides to the gate and peers up into the bright sun and toward the village. In his peripheral vision he glimpses one of the dark brown kids attempt an ambitious leap from one rock to another. Dark brown with a small white mark to the left of his tail. Vantaris notes it for future reference. The kid had landed badly and, in that seemingly insignifcant blunder. sealed its own fate. He shields his eyes and catches a flash of white as a small Fiat pickup negotiates one of the hairpin bends above. He takes a battered red box of Sante from his rolled up shirt sleeve and lights one. And he waits.

Gilbert drops the Fiat into third and sweeps into the bend with tyres howling - the sun has heated the road and softened the tyres. The empty water canisters slide across the truck bed behind him and he smiles, "I should have tied them down ... I always think of it ... and always it is too late ..."   Remembering his old Citroen DS he automatically reaches for the column change and has to correct himself. "She was a beauty, but a farmer needs a pick up not a limousine ... she ate these hairpins ... and at night ...  the headlights tracing out the bends before I got into them ... and the ride ... smoothing out the potholes ... she was a goddess indeed ... but we have to let go ... come on Pansy ... come on little pickup." And he uses the diesel's extra torque to make up for missing his gear change. As he rounds the last hairpin he sees the spring and coasts the last 50 meters.

Vantaris watches the little white Fiat come round the last bend and listens to the engine, "Bravo, - it is Gil, maybe he will have some rope. Of course he will have rope. Gil carries everything in that little fortigaki of his." The windows are wide open and Gil is wearing a huge straw hat tied on under the chin and smoking. "So Gil, he never uses the air-con" and he was back to his childhood when first he had met Gil.

He had been out with some friends and he had stayed long after them He had stayed too late -  watching the buzzards in the gorge way below his village. It was dark but it had been spring then, and so it was not properly night-time. Gil had swept past him in the magnificent Citroen, the feeble headlights picking him out against the hedge only at the last moment but Gil had braked and waited for him to catch up. They had driven to the village in silence, his english had been very scant back then and Gil's Greek almost non-existent. To this day he recalled the smooth black leather of the seats and the utter opulence of the alien car. Even the smell of it lived with him yet. He had had the windows open that day - all of them - and refused to put on the air-con but it had only been much later, when they were real friends and he had been to the frontisteria for a few years that he had dared to ask why. Gil had patiently explained about how running the air-con used more petrol and reduced the speed of the car.  Vantaris had not believed him and so Gil took him out onto the then new main coast road in in the Citroen to prove his point.  demonstrated. One hundred and eighty kilometers an hour through the twists and bends late at night - he had been so exhilarated. And still Gil does not use the air-con. And neither does Vantaris.

The Fiat pulls up beside the spring and Gil gets out of the passenger door pushing his hat to the back of his head. Dust tumbles out after him. "Mother of god. has he not fixed that door yet?"  Vantaris watches him take the water canisters from the back of the pickup and saunter over to the spring. "Will he see my boots?" he wonders. Gil does see the boots, and carefully moves them into a shadier spot before he reaches the spring itself. "Gil is good people" he says to himself " and the lovely Becky too. They are good people". He checks the goats, listening carefully to their bells and placing every single one of them on the rock faces before resuming his study of Gil.