The "Mediterranean diet" doesn't exist.
It was invented by Ancel Keys in the 1960s after he cherry-picked data from 7 countries out of 22 to prove saturated fat causes heart disease.
He studied Crete during Lent when the Orthodox population wasn't eating meat for religious reasons.
He recorded this as their normal diet.
He studied Southern Italy post-WWII when meat was rationed and people were eating poverty rations, not traditional cuisine.
He ignored:
- France (high saturated fat, low heart disease)
- Switzerland (high cheese consumption, excellent health)
- West Germany (rising fat intake, falling heart disease)
The countries that contradicted his hypothesis were excluded.
The "Mediterranean diet" is what poor people ate during food shortages and religious fasting, marketed as optimal nutrition.
Your grandmother in Naples was eating that diet because she was broke, not because it was healthy.
When she could afford meat, she bought meat.
The entire Mediterranean diet paradigm is based on studying poverty and calling it wisdom.