A timeless tradition converted into a dietary ideal or the contrary? Beyond the scientific discovery of the Mediterranean Diet

This article is about the "scientific discovery" of the Mediterranean diet, recently promoted by UNESCO as a intangible cultural heritage of humanity, analysed here from an historical and genealogical perspective. To do so, it is necessary first to take into account the historical and social contexts underlying its discovery - the rural areas of Crete and the popular districts of Naples - as well as those of the scientific community and of the post-war American middle class. This return to the past is intended to demonstrate that the Mediterranean diet is not really a timeless tradition, an expression of "popular wisdom" perpetuated and unchanged until the time of its scientific discovery, but rather the result of a dietary discipline imposed in the first case by need and, in the second case, by food nostalgia, reinterpreted in the light of a Puritan vegetarian ideal, which has its origins a century ago in the United States of America.