For starters, it has to do with societal attitudes towards food<\/strong> and the role it\u2019s expected to play in everyday life.\u00a0 Television commercials always provide interesting clues into a culture and if you\u2019ve seen some of the ads in Italy then you know what I mean.\u00a0 Like Americans, Italians devote a great deal of advertising space to food and eating.\u00a0 But that\u2019s where the similarity ends.Watch a food ad in the U.S. and you\u2019ll see a sporty couple hiking through a pristine forest, wearing backpacks and munching on a super-enhanced granola bar, fortified with a year\u2019s supply of vitamins and minerals.\u00a0 They pause briefly along their trek to take in the mountain view while simultaneously chomping down their fibrous wafers composed of quinoa seeds, tofu, green algae extract, volcanic dust and tree bark.\u00a0 Yum!<\/span><\/p>\n Now check out the television advertisement for Italy\u2019s favorite yogurt where voluptuous women in various stages of undress implore the viewer to \u201cfate l\u2019amore con il sapore<\/i>,\u201d make love with the flavor.\u00a0 There is absolutely no sense of shame or exploitative marketing.\u00a0 The connection is already there, these ads merely hold up a mirror.\u00a0 No mention of fat content or calories per serving or daily supply of calcium; the focus is only on the pleasure.<\/p>\n (So just ask yourself, “What does Rocco Siffredi eat in Italy?”)<\/p>\n But the pleasure in savoring good quality food is a serious thing in Italy and woe be to the irreverent transgressor who fails to follow proper decorum.\u00a0 Yes, there are rules\u2014and very strict ones, in fact.\u00a0 But the rules are aimed towards increasing the flavor and enjoyment of your meals<\/strong>, not some fabricated, misguided nutritional formula touted by the latest Internet guru whose primary concern is their profit and not your health (and least of all your pleasure). \u201cHealthy\u201d should be a natural consequence of good eating, not<\/i> the primary obsession. Pleasure is the \u201cobsession\u201d and without it, what\u2019s the point?<\/p>\n Once, while dining in a pizzeria, I overheard a waiter reprimanding an American couple sitting at the table next to me.\u00a0 The unfortunate diners had committed the sin of asking for a box<\/strong> to take their leftover pizza back to the hotel, ostensibly to be consumed for breakfast the next morning.<\/p>\n The waiter could hardly contain his rage. \u201cWould you eat your shoe for breakfast, too?!? Because that\u2019s what this pizza will taste like tomorrow\u2014your shoe!! \u00a0You eat my pizza fresh or not at all!!!\u201d\u00a0 He snapped the remaining pizza off the table and stormed off towards the kitchen where I\u2019m quite sure he disposed of it properly.<\/p>\n But I certainly don\u2019t judge.\u00a0 In fact, I openly admit that I\u2019ve strayed from the path of righteousness myself on occasion.\u00a0 Once, at a fancy ristorante<\/i> in Florence, I ordered one of their famous bistecca fiorentina<\/i>.\u00a0 I asked for it \u201cmedium,\u201d unaware at the time that chefs in Florence aren\u2019t interested in how you want your steak cooked; it will arrive al sangue<\/i> (bloody rare) regardless of your preference<\/strong>.\u00a0 My friends, I kid you not; the slab of cow that appeared on my plate that night was still mooing.\u00a0 Indeed, I\u2019m quite convinced that a skilled veterinarian could have resuscitated the poor animal.<\/p>\n I then proceed to compound my mistake<\/strong> by asking the waiter if the chef wouldn\u2019t mind cooking it a bit more.\u00a0 The waiter hesitated, scoffed, and then duly took my plate back to the kitchen as requested.\u00a0 I sat back, had another sip of Chianti, and waited for the steak to return.\u00a0 Instead, what returned 10 minutes later was an unrecognizable hunk of charcoal.<\/p>\n Yes, the chef had taken offense to my request, and now, in a game of wits, he was daring me to complain further.\u00a0 I wisely relented, not wanting to test the degree of his ire.\u00a0 He had a kitchen full of sharp knives, after all, and all I had was my indignity<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I wrote an article a while back entitled, \u201cFive Italian Food Rules<\/a> <\/strong>that Foreigners Need to Know.\u201d\u00a0 The post was quite popular and it inspired me to dig deeper into this phenomenon.\u00a0 As I observed the eating habits of Italians with an increasingly critical eye, more and more of these \u201crules\u201d began to emerge.\u00a0 The topic is rich with humorous anecdotes and so I decided to expand on it further by launching a new website, appropriately called, “Eat Like an Italian,<\/em>” where I exalt the benefits of a Mediterranean Diet while ridiculing the imposters of Italian food<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Obviously it\u2019s about food and cooking, but not as foodie or chef might look at them. There are no glossy photos of ripe tomatoes and juicy melons spread out across the pages like a Playboy centerfold.\u00a0 (\u201cFood porn\u201d being the overused buzzword of the decade.)\u00a0 Not too many elaborate recipes requiring an industrial kitchen and a culinary degree from Le Cordon Bleu<\/i>.\u00a0 And certainly no sanctimonious preaching about the dubious benefits of a gluten-free, dairy-free, taste-free<\/strong>, raw-vegan-paleo diet (kill me now).\u00a0<\/p>\n No, instead I\u2019ve kept it quite simple: just a dash of folk knowledge, a pinch of common sense, and as always, a healthy measure of good humor<\/strong>.\u00a0 Buon appetito!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In many ways, this blog has been a vehicle to help me expand my own understanding of Italian culture through various aspects of society. \u00a0In trying to appreciate Italy more thoroughly, I\u2019ve written about the history, the language, the politics, and yes, of course the food. This is not a food blog but it would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11337,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[161,52,61,18,15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1606"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12351,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions\/12351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Rocco Siffredi Diet<\/h2>\n
![\"What](\"https:\/\/rickzullo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/amica-chips.jpg\")
<\/a>How to Eat Like an Italian<\/h2>\n