Italy’s Climatarian Movements

by Francesca De Smet

“Italy’s a big player in food sustainability – many movements are sprouting from this,” says Elena Cadel, a psychologist and researcher at the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) Foundation. Italy ranks 6th out of 25 countries worldwide on the Food Sustainability Index, which measures food loss and waste, sustainable agriculture, and nutritional challenges. It is the best-performing European country when it comes to low-impact agriculture.

A survey of the BCFN Foundation shows that 62% of young Italians are willing to adopt a climatarian diet, which consists of mostly plant-based local food. This should not be surprising since the traditional Mediterranean diet is based on home-cooked foods with a variety of seasonal vegetables. In fact, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recommends the Mediterranean diet for people who want to reduce their carbon footprint.

Yet Italians have lost their appetite for natural food, favouring convenience over quality. As a result, they lean increasingly towards an unhealthy Western diet, full of sugar and animal fats. A report from NPR showed the majority of Italians have abandoned their traditional diet by replacing fish with red meat, olive oil with butter, and eating more processed foods in general. The Italian Nutritional Observatory Grana Padano found that Italians consume unsustainable products on a daily basis – especially canned fish, sugar, and potato chips. They are eating four times more meat than they did fifty years ago – a result of rising incomes.

To raise awareness about Italians’ food habits, the BCFN Foundation created the “Double Pyramid”. It illustrates which foods should be consumed at which proportions for health and environmental benefits. Interestingly, ingredients that damage our body – meat, sugar, and cheese – are also the ones most destructive to our planet. Fruit, vegetables, and grains are considered most eco-friendly and health-friendly.

Cadel says that following a climatarian diet “is not something people do for the planet – Italians are obsessed with their own health. It’s a positive side effect that it also happens to be good for the environment.”

Climatarian movements in Italy are prosperous – they aim to bring Italians back to their roots and rectify what has been lost. According to Bio Bank, the amount of organic restaurants increased by 69% from 2011 to 2015, with Emilia-Romagna at the top of the chart, followed by Lombardia and Toscana.

“Rumi – Bottega organica” is one of these businesses, a cosy deli hidden in the small streets of Trastevere, run by Emanuele Capitani and Sara Anzani. One can discover a wide range of vegetarian foods behind the glass display case: vegetable lasagne, multi-grain bagels and carrot cake are just a few. Daily, Capitani serves ten new dishes based on the ingredients local farmers deliver the night before.

“Organic food is the only real food,” he states. “Pesticides kill one’s health, the soil and ecosystems.” Even his bread and cheese are organic; Capitani happily suggests how best to pair them with a local beer or cold-pressed juice.    

As a reaction to fast food, Carlo Petrini started The Slow Food Movement, which defends regional traditions and encourages farming of local plants, seeds, and livestock. “Km 0” is another flourishing climatarian movement with restaurants using low impact ingredients for their seasonal menus. The term literally stands for zero transportation – the food you eat has to come from within a hundred miles.

But Cadel warns for the “Km 0 myth”. She says, “People think it’s a simple equation: if it’s km 0 it must have a low environmental impact. But sustainability is a bigger issue than just eating local.” She believes that becoming more conscious about how much energy and water certain foods consume is the first step towards an eco-friendly diet. For example, one egg needs about 200 liters to be produced whereas one tomato only needs about 12 liters.

Italians nowadays have a wide spectrum of choice when strolling through the fruit and vegetable aisle in the supermarket. Pineapples from Costa Rica, red mangoes from India, coconuts from Indonesia seem to have fallen straight of a tree into the wooden baskets. The labels show their origin and price but not their hidden environmental cost. These ingredients, harvested prematurely so that they will not rot in the process of being flown in from the other end of the world, are items that heavily contribute to climate change.

Farm-to-table movements prioritise local and seasonal ingredients and emphasise quality over convenience. The Mercato di Campagna Amica near Circo Massimo has boomed with farmers from Lazio and local Romans seeking quality ingredients. Every Saturday and Sunday, one can find everything that belongs in a climatarian’s cupboard. Dried products, like the many herbs and spices farmers sell, are the most eco-friendly since they store for a long time. One stall displays felt bags filled to the top with dried beans. The shapes and colours are plenty: from basic cannellini beans and ancient gladiator chickpeas to purple-speckled ones that look like minuscule dinosaur eggs.

Last year, The Food Assembly also opened 169 collectives in Italy. The French farm-to-table organization promotes sustainable agriculture and the reduction of food waste. Members pick the assembly closest to their home, order the food from a long list of seasonal produce, then collect it a few days later. Farmers know exactly how much is needed, and thus harvest accordingly. Limiting food waste means that overall there is more to share with fewer resources. Today more food is thrown away than is needed to feed all the starving people of the world.

“We have to feed 9 billion people soon,” Cadel says. “I think we have to follow every possible path. Buying the best plant-based food available from local markets is a really good solution.”

Climatarianism is a continuous scale – following this diet, certain food groups do not need to be cut out completely. One can eat little meat and some cheese, and still be climatarian, only a little less than those omitting animal products altogether. As a result, this eco-friendly lifestyle is more accessible than veganism, for example, in which no animal products can be consumed.

“Everything in moderation,” says Mariano Contino, a native Sicilian who maintained his traditional Mediterranean diet in his adopted country of Belgium. He struggled adjusting to local ingredients, craving the more exotic Italian flavours. In his organic vegetable garden he now grows almost everything he used to eat in Italy.

The main misconception among Italians is that the diet is more expensive than a meat-based alternative. According to data from the Italian Price Observatory, eating meat only twice a week equals savings of €4,50 weekly and €320 yearly. However, the savings are not solely economical. Animal agriculture requires a lot of resources and is very polluting. Each day, a person on a meat-free diet saves over 4,000 litres of water, 20 kilos of grain, three square metres of rainforest – the equivalent of 9 kilos CO2 and the life of one animal.

“There will always be room for improvement on a personal, political, and technological level,” Cadel notes. We need to eat a more varied diet to sustain our land and ocean. The government must invest more in agricultural knowledge, so that farmers can use water more efficiently and reduce the use of fertilizers and pesticides. But it all starts with a personal choice.

“There’s no health for you if you are polluting your own environment,” Cadel claims. As a grassroots movement, individuals need to further spread the climatarian idea across Italy.