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The Healthy Mediterranean Diet Will Be Under Siege By Fast Food

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about €2.9 billion in 2019, which amounts to a 50 percent increase from 2014 (Jones). This indicates that the healthy Mediterranean diet will continue to be under siege by fast food which could see the healthiest people in the world become fat and more prone to diet-based diseases.
As noted earlier, the problem of health and culture go together not only in Europe, but also in the Asian markets. Various countries in Asia have seen very similar results of what is happening in the Mediterranean. Many Asian nations have been invaded by the fast-food industry and have seen their culture and health decline. Specifically in China, the traditional cuisine includes large amounts of vegetables and grains with meager quantity of meat. However, …show more content…

This indicates that people feel the pressure that fast food does in fact affect culture and that measures must be taken in order to prevent losing their identity before it is too late. One example of this is in France, a country with a long history of taking pride in its cuisine. In 2011, for the first time in the country’s history, fast food earned more than the traditional French restaurants and bistros (Samuel). The traditional diet is vital to France as it is a way of life and a source of revenue from tourists. For those reasons in 2010, the government was able to put the ethnic diet on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage List as a way to protect the cuisine (“France’s Fast Food”). The same article noted that the government has also tried to push through legislation that would limit the amount of places that can be called a “restaurant” to establishments who make over half of their food on the premises. This potential regulation would create transparency which would help to distinguish ethnic food from fast food. Through these measures, the French government is attempting to control the damage and lessen the impact of fast food on their historic cuisine. However, it is an uphill battle to try and reverse the effects of the fast-food industry even in

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