Italian children and teenagers are increasingly living with obesity. Salvatore, 17, weighs 170kg (26st 10lb) and struggles to walk. He cannot tie his shoelaces, and his Vespa scooter strains under his weight — its wheels broke seven times in one week. "He eats constantly," says his mother Anna. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.
Salvatore is among a growing number of Italian children and teenagers living with obesity. The problem is particularly acute in the south: in parts of the Campania region, more than 40% of eight- and nine-year-olds are overweight. The town of Ponticelli, on the outskirts of Naples, has earned the unenviable reputation as one of the world's child obesity capitals.
This is a striking development in a country long regarded as the spiritual home of the Mediterranean diet. Yet today, Italian children are among the most overweight in Europe, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Salvatore is waiting for life-changing surgery at the Betania Hospital in Ponticelli, where Dr Sonja Chiappetta has spent 15 years treating patients with severe obesity. Until recently, most of her patients were in their fifties. "Now I see those same patients when they're teenagers, as young as 16. They are getting younger, and it's frightening," she says.
The surgery she carries out removes up to 90% of the stomach, preventing people from eating large quantities. Demand has risen sharply in this part of Italy. But Salvatore has been told he cannot get the operation — his weight is so excessive it makes the surgery too dangerous. Instead, Dr Chiappetta has prescribed him a GLP-1 weight-loss injection to reduce his appetite.
For decades, Italy was held up as a model of healthy eating. The Mediterranean diet — rich in vegetables, legumes, olive oil, whole grains and fish — became famous after US physiologist Ancel Keys and his wife, biochemist Margaret Keys, studied communities in southern Italy in the 1950s and linked their habits to low rates of heart disease. But the Italy that inspired those studies no longer exists.
"The traditional Mediterranean diet has been lost," says Dr Valter Longo, director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California. "Only 10% of Italians really follow it." Dr Longo sums up the modern Italian diet with what he calls the "five Ps": pizza, pasta, potatoes, protein and pane (Italian for bread).
The transformation is visible everywhere: from supermarket shelves stocked with ultra-processed foods to pizzerias selling slices piled high with chips, sausages and fried snacks. Dr Roberto Berni Canani, a paediatrician and obesity specialist at the Federico II University in Naples, sees the consequences daily. "I've treated children who are just two or three years old and already weigh 25kg," he says. He notes that most parents do not recognise their children are overweight.
Ten-year-old Francesca has a persistent cough and struggles to swallow. Doctors suspect an inflammatory condition of the oesophagus. She weighs 60kg (9st 6lb) — but that is not why her parents sought medical help. Francesca says she eats bread with Nutella for breakfast, a chocolate-filled sponge cake as a snack, pasta with lentils for lunch and usually chicken for dinner. "But she doesn't eat vegetables," her mother Carmen interjects. Francesca's parents insist she is active — she does artistic gymnastics and Latin dance, and does not get tired. They have never considered her weight as a problem.