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A Visit to the Land of Happy Old People
Reflections on the Mediterranean diet as an antidote to encroaching middle age
CILENTO, ITALY — By the time my husband and I set off on our hike in the Cilento, an Edenic mountainous region of Italy where some of the longest-lived people on Earth dwell, we’d been in Italy gorging on antipasti, primi, secondi, dolci, and vino twice daily for almost a week. To say we staggered to the edge of paradise would be only a slight exaggeration.
The Cilento is Italy’s second largest national park, encompassing thousands of square kilometers of cliffs, gorges, mountain peaks, plunging waterfalls, and verdant ravines. Situated on the edge of the Mediterranean just south of the Amalfi Coast, Cilento stretches far inland to include the mountainous regions of Magna Graecia, the ancient Greek colony on the ankle and toe of the Italian boot, near UNESCO sites like Pompeii and the idyllic temple complex of Paestum.
Besides blissful sheep, jolly goats, olive trees the size of oaks, and vistas of misty mountains splintered with birds-eye views of Homer’s wine-dark sea, the Cilento is said — and not by ancient legend, but by modern scientists — to be home to some of the healthiest human beings on earth.
