Italy finds the secret to life, olive-ously

Ever since that cooking lesson at the professional culinary school with Chef Fulvio De Santa, I've learned to appriciate cooking with olive oil. While slightly more afforadable here verses typical American grocery stores, olive oil remains the favorite cooking oil of this well-respected chef (who, by the way, cooked for Pope Benedict while living at the Vatican for two weeks.) The great thing about olive oil is that it is made from a vegetable that contains no saturated fat-a claim that niether corn nor peanut oil can make. It is a great substitute for butter and margarine, even when making simple Italian-American snacks such as garlic bread (since this is not an authentic dish, we"ll call it Italian-American, really, it doesn"t exist over here, outside my kitchen, of course :). Since corn is subsidized (meaning farmers are paid more to produce it) in America, it can be found in almost every popular dish: from chickens being fed corn till they become chicken nuggets and then breaded with a corn-based coating, then fried in corn oil to the all-American french fry, it seems the U.S. has got it all wronge when it comes in comparison with the Mediterraeinian diet. When a society continually embraces their original food culture, manageing to hold onto it for thousands of years and in turn produces a healthier society than the U.S. it seems to me they're the one's who have found the secret to the fountain of youth. Statistics show that men in Italy who consume olive oil verses men in the U.S. who don't are less likly to suffer a heart attack and actually live longer. All these benefits, despite italian men enjoying their cigarettes and wine. It raises the question, does eating a diet low in saturated fat cancel out the adverse afects of smoking? Or is it not just the diet here, but the lifestyle as well? All I can say is I would love to have these working hours: 8am-1pm off from 1pm-3pm (a time when a meal and a nap is the norm) and then work from usually 3-6pm. I think the extended hours of daylight here may be another great benefit since you see people going out walking after the evening meal-the streets here are either senic or there's usually a community band or soloists playing in Piazza Urbe. In the end I think it all comes down to the climate: it's the perfect weather and the largest land area where olives can grow...and Italy is not about to give up her stress-free lifestyle that I think is owed to those tiny green miracles.