The hidden Mediterranean diet: wild vegetables traditionally gathered and consumed in the Gargano area, Apulia, SE Italy

Nello Biscotti,Andrea Pieroni

doi:10.5586/asbp.2015.031

Abstract

<p>Despite the extensive bio-scientific literature concerning the Mediterranean diet, which emerged in the last three decades, systematic ethnography-centered investigations on a crucial portion of this food system, linked to the traditional consumption of non-cultivated vegetables, are still largely lacking in many areas of the Mediterranean Basin.</p><p>In this research, an ethnobotanical field study focusing on wild vegetables traditionally gathered and consumed locally, was conducted in a few centers and villages located in the Gargano area, northern Apulia, SE Italy, by interviewing twenty-five elderly informants. The folk culinary uses of seventy-nine botanical taxa of wild vascular plants, belonging to nineteen families, were recorded, thus showing a remarkable resilience of traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) related to wild food plants. In particular, approximately one-fourth of the recorded wild vegetables are still very commonly gathered and consumed nowadays, while ten taxa have never been reported in previous ethnobotanical studies conducted in Southern Italy. These findings demonstrate the crucial cultural role played by folk cuisines in preserving TEK, despite significant socio-economic changes that have affected the study area during the past four decades.</p>

Highlights

An ethnobotanical field study focusing on wild vegetables traditionally gathered and consumed locally, was conducted in a few centers and villages located in the Gargano area, northern Apulia, SE Italy, by interviewing twentyfive elderly informants
These findings demonstrate the crucial cultural role played by folk cuisines in preserving traditional environmental knowledge (TEK), despite significant socio-economic changes that have affected the study area during the past four decades
Despite the fact that these plants have represented for centuries and millennia the folk daily foods in the Mediterranean and the Near East, during the winter and spring months, in-depth ethnography-based ethnobotanical studies published in the international literature and focusing on the identification of traditionally gathered wild vegetables, as well as on the detailed documentation of their folk culinary uses, are still relatively scarce for the Mediterranean Basin, if we exclude some areas of Spain, inland southern Italy and Sicily, the Western Aegean part of Turkey, and Dalmatia [12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30]

Summary

Introduction

The Mediterranean diet – the theorization of which was proposed for the first time in the cross-cultural epidemiological “Seven countries study” by the American nutritionist Ancel Benjamin Keys [1,2] – has been defined as a diet “characterized by abundant plant foods, fresh fruit as the typical daily dessert, olive oil as the principal source of fat, dairy products (principally cheese and yogurt), and fish and poultry consumed in low to moderate amounts, zero to four eggs consumed weekly, red meat consumed in low amounts, and wine consumed in low to moderate amounts, normally with meals” [3].this diet has been ascribed to “food patterns typical of Crete, much of the rest of Greece, and southern Italy in the early 1960s, where adult life expectancy was among the highest in the world and rates of coronary heart disease, certain cancers, and other diet-related chronic diseases were among the lowest” [3].Within this context, the consumption of wild vegetables in Southern Europe, still represents a kind of “hidden” part of the Mediterranean diet, despite the large scientificHandling Editor: Łukasz Łuczaj literature pointing out the benefits of this dietary pattern and the fact that this diet has been recently recognized as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity [4], officially ascribed to a few circum-Mediterranean countries: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Greece, Cyprus, and Croatia.Wild vegetables of the Mediterranean diet have been at the center of a series of phytochemical and phytopharmacological studies in recent years that have demonstrated their role in counteracting metabolic diseases and as remarkable anti-oxidants [5,6,7,8,9,10]; wild vegetables are nowadays the focus of many new trends of contemporary European cuisine, which stress the importance of the health benefits of local foods and expressions of terroirs/“sense of place” [11].Despite the fact that these plants have represented for centuries and millennia the folk daily foods in the Mediterranean and the Near East, during the winter and spring months, in-depth ethnography-based ethnobotanical studies published in the international literature and focusing on the identification of traditionally gathered wild vegetables, as well as on the detailed documentation of their folk culinary uses, are still relatively scarce for the Mediterranean Basin, if we exclude some areas of Spain, inland southern Italy and Sicily, the Western Aegean part of Turkey, and Dalmatia [12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30].The global scientific community should maybe consider the urgency of collecting information about these neglected. The Mediterranean diet – the theorization of which was proposed for the first time in the cross-cultural epidemiological “Seven countries study” by the American nutritionist Ancel Benjamin Keys [1,2] – has been defined as a diet “characterized by abundant plant foods, fresh fruit as the typical daily dessert, olive oil as the principal source of fat, dairy products (principally cheese and yogurt), and fish and poultry consumed in low to moderate amounts, zero to four eggs consumed weekly, red meat consumed in low amounts, and wine consumed in low to moderate amounts, normally with meals” [3] This diet has been ascribed to “food patterns typical of Crete, much of the rest of Greece, and southern Italy in the early 1960s, where adult life expectancy was among the highest in the world and rates of coronary heart disease, certain cancers, and other diet-related chronic diseases were among the lowest” [3].

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion