Among the seven countries and three continents examined in the “Seven Countries Study” (1958), a comparative study of dietary regimens, Ancel Keys elected Cilento as a privileged observatory to analyze the connection between food, lifestyle, and the curious concentration of centenarians that still exists today.
There, in the lands that welcomed him for forty years, he understood that to stay well, we must eat well: a goal easily attainable through the Mediterranean way. As it is clear not only to those who have read his 1975 book, How to Eat Well and Stay Well, the Mediterranean Way but to those who have breathed the air there, the Mediterranean way of life has real regenerative power for humans and the ecosystem.
It sounds like an abstract concept, but it is not. Because today, in Pollica, looking closely at the elements that make up the longevity algorithm, it is evident that eating well and being well also mean taking care of our Earth. The elements that make up the longevity algorithm are concretely manifested in the collective ecological consciousness that has matured over the centuries in that territory, in urban and rural development policies that focus on the protection of resources and care for the landscape, agricultural practices with millennia-old origins, in the enhancement of artistic and cultural heritages, in the gastronomy of sustainability (seasonal and circular), of health (balanced and biodiverse), of inclusion (multicultural and welcoming) that has crossed national borders bringing to the world the great icons of Made in Italy pillars of Mediterranean gastronomy.
The concreteness of this concept is manifested in the daily work of Pollica people who have taken inspiration from the Mediterranean Diet lifestyle and cultural heritage, making it an accurate model of integral ecological development. And one among them is, first and foremost, Mayor Stefano Pisani.
This is the Mediterranean Way: Eat Well, Stay Well, and Save the Planet.
Eat Well means not only eating quality food, paying attention to what we eat, tasting slowly, smelling, and sharing, but also discovering its history, origins, and rituals; and if by eating well, we do good to the land, the environment, society, and the economy, food will also make us live better. A healthy and sustainable lifestyle such as that of the Mediterranean Diet — a synthesis of biodiversity, protection, and care — creates a concentric propagation of well-being and widespread prosperity that invests everything inside and outside of us.