Wrong Turn: Italy 2

Part II: Mangia! (Eat!)

A huge portion of Italian culture is edible. Even the most overblown stereotype of Italians' fixation on pasta and pizza is underplayed.

Raised on organic food - or, as it’s called in Italy, food - the whole nation is fanatical about the quality of ingredients. Like all aspects of Italian life, these rigorous standards bucket all food into two categories: ‘the best’ and ‘not the best’. The gelato is either the smoothest scoop in town - or vile, lifeless slush. Everyone knows where the most potent product is at.

The joy of food never fades. An elderly Italian gentleman will lap away at an ice cream with not a thought in the world but his own pleasure. In England, a grown man eating a 99 flake would be a cause for concern. Pull yourself together, man.

In Italy, food that’s exceptional anywhere else in the world is expected everywhere. Even a service station sarnie is baked fresh, bedded with fresh tomatoes and mozzarella - or no Italian in their right mind would buy it.

In fact, no altered psychological state would see an Italian accept a Tesco Meal Deal BLT. The country’s uncompromising standards sent Domino’s Pizza and their sucrosey space-discs packing. The citizens of Naples fought off the march of the golden arches for decades.

Italian parents make guests eat with a friendly show of forcefulness. “Mangia!” - “Eat!” - is a firm instruction. The crushing sadness the host feels when you bow out of a third helping of the fourth course is genuine. Even if it is to make room for the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth.

The time is lunchtime: a heated discussion, which in any other culture would be considered a full-throttle argument, kicks off at the dinner table. Just as it was last lunch, and the lunch before that, the subject is: what’s for lunch tomorrow?

A guest in an Italian home should never make the rookie error of showing a slight appreciation for any one item of food. My eyes rested on a mandarin for just that split-second too long. Italian mamas see everything. Overnight, the citrus fruit bred with the virility of soggy Gremlins.

These extremist-foodies are teased the world over, but the people of Italy care about food as much as we all probably should. In the south of Italy, enjoying meat and veg produced metres away from your house activates a rush of nutrition never before felt. Latent endorphins make you wonder exactly what the fuck it is you’re ingesting the rest of the time.

The Mediterranean diet makes Italian people eat, feel and look better than us - and live longer and healthier - but, somehow, we’re all still convinced the joke’s on them.

If you liked this… check out:

Wrong Turn: Italy - Part I

Wrong Turn: Brazil

Wrong Turn: Vietnam

Wrong Turn: Denmark

Wrong Turn: Thailand

Wrong Turn: Strasbourg / Stuttgart

Wrong Turn: Switzerland