"Love your brother and drink a good glass of wine," is Antonio Todde’s prescription for long life. Experts point to a mix of good genes—Todde’s mother and father lived to 99 and 90, respectively, and a sister is pushing 100—and the Mediterranean diet. Todde still eats pasta, soup, and a bit of lamb or pork daily.

Not every Italian lives to a ripe old age. Nevertheless, Italians (and other southern European peoples) have long enjoyed a higher life expectancy and lower rates of heart disease and cancer than anybody else.

"The first studies took place in the 1950s," said Francesco Branca, a research scientist at the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca per gli Alimenti e la Nutrizione. The name roughly translates as the Italian Institute of Nutrition: Italy’s leading center for food science. Probart and her students had trekked to the Institute’s sprawling, pale-brick campus on Rome’s outskirts, via subway then bus, to hear an Italian perspective.

In the ‘50s, Branca said, "There was an epidemic of cardiovascular disease in the United States, so scientists began to look at the American diet, and compare it to diets in other countries where disease rates were lower." Italy was one of these countries. The first correlation to jump out at these researchers was a link between heart disease and the consumption of saturated fats.

"This link led them to investigate lifestyle and diet in detail," Branca said. A seven-country study conducted in 1960, and the Euratom study of 1965 (undertaken to gauge the possible effects of nuclear fallout on the continent) drew the nutritional outlines of what came to be called the Mediterranean diet.

he basis of this diet was cereals," Branca said. In southern Italy in particular, over 55 percent of daily food was made from grain—pasta and bread. About 20 percent was fresh fruits and vegetables. Only four percent was accounted for by meat, fish, and eggs. Fat made up about 10 percent, most of that added in the form of (monounsaturated) olive oil.

Above all, it was a diet semplice— the simple agrarian fare of a sunny, impoverished region. It was born of necessity, and coupled, of necessity, with lots of physical exercise: plowing and harvesting and tending after sheep. And yes, it included moderate amounts of red wine.

This, in essence, is the diet that was adapted and formalized into a nutritional pyramid by the Oldways Trust in 1994, the one that is increasingly touted as an alternative to strict low-fat diets for protection against disease. Its special virtue, say adherents, is that it tastes good, which means that people are more likely to stick with it. (No argument here.)

Here, Probart’s students are studying the mechanisms by which the Mediterranean diet promotes health. In broad terms, some of the linkages are already clear: Scientists can point to the oleic fatty acids in olive oil as protection against high cholesterol, to the antioxidant qualities of lycopenes in fresh tomatoes, to the cancer-fighting fiber in all those carbohydrates. At a closer level, however, there’s a lot that remains to investigate.

"We are just now trying to understand the effects of specific compounds," Branca said.