Obesity 'public enemy no. 1' - expert

(ANSA) - Rome, April 21 - Obesity is public enemy number one, endocrinologist Gabriele Riccardi said on Thursday during a meeting on food and eco-sustainability organised by the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition in Rome. "Italy is losing ground in terms of longevity, life expectancy, and it is forgetting the Mediterranean diet," Riccardi said. "Italians manage to maintain a fairly balanced diet at home, but the good intentions evaporate when they eat out," he continued. The current lifestyle is "obesogenic", Riccardi said. "The emergency represented by the many overweight people cannot be attributed to individual choices...There is a problem that concerns sociaty as a whole. And obesity is a serious epidemic that must be defeated at an epidemiological level," he concluded.