MACRONUTRIENT AND ENERGY AVAILABILITY

To better understand the characteristics of the diets followed by Greeks in the past,
the macronutrient composition of the diets should be examined. Although the data
used here are derived from populations that cannot be regarded as statistical samples,
some generalizations can be drawn about the diet of pre-World War II Greece. Total
per capita energy availability and the composition of available energy in terms of
macronutrients in two rural and three urban groups are shown in Table 1. Values
presented reflect average per capita nutrient availability in populations composed of
adults and children, with the adult to children ratio ranging for the rural working-
class and middle-class urban populations from 0.40 to 1.0, while it was up to 5.5
for upper-class families. Energy and macronutrient values were estimated on the
basis of previously published data derived from family-budget surveys for the rural
groups and the first two urban groups, and from household logs for the upper class
group.
The amount of daily per capita available energy differed according to economic
environment. For the 19th-century peasants in southern Greece, available energy
was estimated at 1926 kcal/day, while for the 20th-century herders, it amounted to
2310 kcal/day. For members of the urban working class, the per capita energy
availability was 2336 kcal/day, for the middle-class city inhabitants, 2903 kcal/day,
and for the members of the 19th-century upper class, 3335 kcal/day. These differ-
ences can be explained to some extent by the differences in mean age (or the adult
to children ratio), however, it is apparent that total energy availability increased with
affluence.
The composition of diets followed by rural Greeks, whether specializing in
agriculture or in animal husbandry, exhibit common characteristics. Protein repre-
sented almost 18% of the total available energy for rural Greeks in previous decades.
The largest part of the available protein (70% and 84%, for peasants and herders,
respectively) was derived from vegetable sources and mainly from cereals. Avail-
ability of lipids, on the other hand, was low and represented 22.0% and 27.2% of
the total available energy for the southern peasants and the herders, respectively.
Though quantities of lipid calories differed significantly between southern peasants
and northern Greeks specializing in animal husbandry (47 g vs. 70 g), the contribu-
tion of the three types of fatty acids to caloric availability reveals unifying charac-
teristics. Saturated fatty acids accounted for less than 10% of total calories in both
groups (6.1% and 9.6% in southern peasants and northern herders, respectively).
Monounsaturated fatty acids contributed 8.2% and 9.0% of the energy, while con-
tribution of polyunsaturated fatty acids was limited to 4.3-4.4%. The diets of the
urban populations were characterized by higher proportions of lipid calories and
lower proportions of protein and carbohydrate than the diets of rural Greeks. Protein represented 13-14% of the energy available to urban representatives. Among urban
Greeks, the higher the degree of affluence, the lower the contribution of vegetable
protein to energy availability. Carbohydrate accounted for 53.8, 48.3, and 39.7% of
total energy for working-middle and upper-class urban Greeks, respectively.
An overview of all five groups reveals that the higher the degree of affluence,
the higher the percentage of calories derived from lipids as a whole, as well as
from monounsaturated fatty acids. For the representatives of the working class,
total lipids and monounsaturated fatty acids accounted for 30.9% and 15.1% of
available energy, respectively. Middle-class Greeks derived higher proportions of
their energy from lipids, as well as monounsaturated fats (35.3% and 18.1%,
respectively). Prosperous 19th-century Greeks showed an even greater reliance on
fats, deriving an impressive 43.2% of their total calories from fat, and a 21.0%
from monounsaturates. For all three urban groups, half of the total available fat
came in the form of monounsaturated fatty acids. In contrast, monounsaturated
fats represented about a third of total fat grams for the two rural populations.
Availability of polyunsaturated fatty acids among the three urban groups remained
at the same low levels found in the rural Greeks, representing approximately 4%
of the total calories. Cholesterol availability was low among rural Greeks and
representatives of the working and middle class, with the southern rural group
exhibiting the lowest (59 mg) and the urban middle-class group the highest value
(175 mg). In contrast, the estimated cholesterol available to the prosperous 19th-
century urbanites reached 340 mg/day.
It is worth mentioning that the daily per capita saturated fat and cholesterol
availability observed among northern herders was only 25 g and 139 mg, respec-
tively, a fact due to a limited use of animal products, despite their involvement in
animal husbandry.