Bio,
you have mentioned 3 dishes (of a very varied cuisine), which are 3 examples of your personal experience of a meat restaurant abroad, but which do not represent the average Italian diet for many reasons:
1) In Italy you have meat restaurants and fish restaurants
2) Fish restaurants represent the majority of the restaurants, mostly located along the coast (the entire country is sorrounded by the sea)
3) In any case italians do not usually eat at restaurants (usually when I go, I go to a fish restaurant) because most of italians can cook at home or consider restaurant meals not healthy
4) whenever we go to a restaurant (usually on special occasions), the calories intake is much higher than normal, also because we rarely eat fruit and vegetables in restaurants (something you can buy and/or easily prepare and eat at home).
Again we eat relatively less meat than Americans (in the ancient Mediterranean diet meat was almost absent, now thanks to the American lifestyle importation, meat is more frequent than 50 years ago, when it was eaten only on special occasions), more fruit and vegetables, more fish, more bread (whole bread usage is spreading), more pasta/pizza (new generations tend to eat less pasta than older generations), olive oil and some eat nuts. Processed food intake is limited and fast foods have never been successful here in Italy. Also quantities are much smaller that in the US. For all the above in US the deaths due to CHD are almost double than in Spain or Italy, but I realize that most in the US fail to understand and that is why they keep dying of CHD and/or massively need statins and high EPA intake.
