Europe's Three Types of Diet

Let us start with a gross over-simplification and assert that Europe's food patterns can be reduced to three basic types: northern, central and southern. If further we make the barbaric assumption that all food can be assigned to one or other of seven categories and that all our enjoyment or at least energy derived therefrom can be expressed in calories, then the three diets can be portrayed thus:

MAINTYPES OF DIET

Food Group Calories per Head per Day
Northern Central Southern
Cereals 800 1000 1350
Roots 190 280 150
Sugar 480 300 150
Fruit and vegetables 160 180 300
Meat, fish, eggs 530 410 150
Milk 410 270 100
Fats 520 440 350
Total 3090 2880 2550

The first diet typifies Sweden and the UK but applies also with minor modifications to the rest of Scandinavia. It approximates fairly closely to the diet of the United States which has roughly 100 less calories each on cereals and on roots and correspondingly more on fruit and vegetables, and poultry and eggs. The food pattern of the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland lies between the northern and the 'central' diet, which latter represents the food of France and Germany, Austria and Ireland. To the southern group belong Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece. The following brief comments on these diets will seem too elementary for the European reader but may be useful to our Chinese friend and other non-Europeans.

Diet No. 1, which is high in calories, is distinguished by its low proportion of cereals and its high proportion of animal products. Conversely diet No. 3, which has insufficient calories, depends heavily on cereals and rather little on livestock products, whilst No. 2 occupies a midway position. In the northern diet the bread will be wheaten in the UK but made of rye in parts of Scandinavia, the meat will be half pork (or bacon) and most of the remainder beef (some mutton in the UK). The fats will be as to one-quarter butter and three-quarters margarine. The drinks will be tea ( UK), coffee ( Scandinavia) and beer in all. The people of the central countries consume large quantities of potatoes -- described as 'roots' in nutritionists' jargon; their bread is wheaten save in parts of Germany, they cat more veal and drink less milk than the northerners. In the southern, largely vegetarian, diet much of the wheat is consumed as pasta, while maize and rice feature in some districts; much of the meat is goat and lamb; the principal fat is olive oil; vegetable and fruit consumption is high. Drinks are coffee and wine.