McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut, and hundreds of fast food rip-offs, like McDelly’s and King's Burger, are more and more satiating the appetites of hungry Cretans, replacing the traditional dinner table ladened with olive oil, fresh produce and fish – the basic ingredients of the famed Mediterranean diet.

And, the hundreds of Greek fast food outlets, dishing out piles of fatty meat and greasy fried potatoes wrapped in pita bread, are equally to blame for luring people, especially youngsters, away from a healthy dinner.

In fact, in our local area a quick survey showed fast food and junk food stores of all types, including the numerous cantinas, are opening at a rate of more than three-to-one compared to traditional tavernas.

According to medical experts, this eating trend and changing diet has led to an epidemic of obesity and related maladies, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

However, when asked, students and young working adults say they increasingly rely on fast food due to excessive hours at their desks.

According to a survey among Greeks aged 18 to 29, more than half claim to have changed their eating habits over the past three years, with a third (36 percent) saying they often opt for convenience food. Half of the group said they eat fast food up to five times a week.

Asked to describe a typical Mediterranean diet, half (48 percent) could not, while 21 percent said they believed “healthy eating” was all about moderation.

The fact that the Med diet, which has been associated with longer life spans and lower rates of heart disease and cancer, is in retreat in Crete – considered the birthplace of the healthful cuisine – is evident since two-thirds of local children are now overweight – and the resulting health effects are mounting.

“A steady diet of fast food like burgers and pizza is extremely unhealthy and very fattening,” says Dr. Vangelis Athousakis, a pathologist from Kokkini Hani. “But the pita is even more harmful. It is much heavier and fattier. We must get back to eating a well-balanced diet that is prepared properly.”

Dr. P. V. D., a pediatrician from N. Alikarnassos, who declined to use her name, said eight out of 10 of her patients are overweight to some degree, and fast food, such as pita and souvlaki, is mostly to blame.

“I’m seeing many more children with sugar diabetes and teenagers with hypertension,” she said. “With diabetes, if you have the gene and you’re lean, the disease may not appear until you’re 40 or 50 years old. However, if you’re an overweight child, diabetes will appear at a much younger age.”

   
Dr. Michalis Stagourakis, another pediatrician, reports a transformation of his practice in western Crete over the past three years. The usual sniffles and stomachaches of childhood are being replaced with more serious illnesses related to bad diets.

“This is a place where you’d see people who lived to 100, where people were all fit and trim,” Dr. Stagourakis said. “Now you see kids whose longevity is less than their parents’. That’s really scaring people.”

That concern has been echoed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, which said in a recent report that the Mediterranean region’s diet had “decayed into a moribund state.”  

“It is almost a perfect diet, but when we looked at what people were eating we noticed that much of the highly praised (Med) diet didn’t exist any more,” said the report’s author, Josef Schmidhuber, a senior economist at the food organization. “It has become just a notion.”

The Greek government is concerned about the country’s eating habits, too. For the past few years, it has sent teams to village schools to weigh children and lecture them on nutrition, with a food pyramid focused on the Med diet as a guide.

But, the government’s efforts aren’t making much of a difference, so far. This spring, a majority of children who were tested at elementary schools were found to have high cholesterol, it was revealed.

And, it’s no wonder, since parents are not setting such a good example for the kids.

The staggering fact is that three-quarters of this country’s entire adult population is overweight or obese, the worst rate in Europe “by far,” according to the United Nations. The rates of overweight 12-year-old boys rose more than 200 percent from 1982 to 2002 and have been rising even faster since.

Dr. Antonia Trichopoulou, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Athens Medical School, said the problem had grown acute with the spread of supermarkets and, especially, convenience foods and fast-food shops.

“In the last five years it’s become really bad,” she said. “The children are all quite heavy.”

Dr. Trichopoulou said that some older people might have been tolerant of childhood chubbiness because Greece had for so long been a poor nation where hunger was a recurrent problem – a fact that is said to have given birth to the Med diet.

The traditional diet, low in saturated fats and high in nutrients like flavonoids, was based on vegetables, fruit, unrefined grains, olive oil for cooking and for flavoring, and a bit of wine — all consumed on a daily basis.

Fish, nuts, poultry, eggs, cheese and sweets were weekly additions. Red meat, refined sugar or flour, butter and other oils or fats were consumed rarely, if at all.

Research on the diet took off in the 1990s, as scientists noted that people in Mediterranean countries lived longer and had low rates of serious diseases despite a penchant for patently unhealthy habits like smoking and drinking. But that protection is now seen as rapidly eroding.

Eva Maherithou Spanaki of Kokkini Hani, who proudly stated that her nine-year-old daughter, Paulina, does not eat fast food and is not overweight, said she cooks family meals everyday, whether she is working or not.

"I believe fast food is very damaging and at home I adhere to the Med diet in my cooking," she said. "We have red meat occasionally, but also fish and poultry. And I always have fresh vegetables with every meal."

Mrs. Maherithou Spanaki said that when her daughter goes out with friends it's usually for ice cream or some sweet treat, but not fast food.

Soula Mavroforaki does not want her two children to eat fast food but maybe once a week they will if she does not have the time to cook.

"However, they enjoy souvlaki and pita so much, that I allow them to have fast food occasionally as a treat to eat with their friends," she said.

A Hersonissos housewife, who said both her children were overweight (and, therefore, didn't want her name mentioned), said she tries to keep them on a healthy diet, but she can't watch them all the time.

"I try to prepare fresh vegetables with each meal – using zucchini, broad beans, broccoli, and things like that," she said. "Plus I always make a salad, either cabbage or lettuce with tomatoes and cucumbers. And, I make sure to alternate red meat courses with chicken, fish and rabbit. And, of course, I use only my own olive oil."

Sounds good – but is it enough to lure the kids out of the shops and cantinas and back to the dinner table for a Med-diet meal? Probably not.

Although McDonald’s introduced a healthier menu some years ago with an emphasis on Greek and Caesar salads, it’s still the belt-busting Big Mac that most people order.

After all, you never see a McDonald’s sign stating: “over a billion salads sold!”