When my husband and I visited cities in Southern Italy and Sicily during a 12-day tour, eggplant kept showing up in various forms.

Lunch in Capri featured a pita-like sandwich stuffed with mixed greens and grilled eggplant, dinner in Bari incorporated an eggplant stack entrée with marinara and fresh basil and a farewell dinner in Palermo featured pasta alla Norma, a dish with eggplant and tomatoes.

Image by Achim Ruhnau from Pixabay

An additional pattern emerged. Dinners began with a first course of orecchiette, ear-shaped pasta, or another variety of pasta doused lightly with marinara sauce, and little meat appeared on our plates.

A tour guide in Lecce explained that people in that area ate pasta every day, along with fish and vegetables. Unlike the homemade pasta we enjoyed at home, orecchiette was made with whole wheat or semolina flour and water, no eggs. Egg pasta is too rich to eat every day, according to our guide.

Once again, it reminded me that in our quest to eat healthier since my husband’s heart attack we needed to return to our Italian roots.

When people consider Italian food, they may picture lasagna packed with meat and dripping with melty mozzarella or spaghetti and beefy meatballs. But some of these dishes are actually Italian-American adaptations of meals they created as they became more prosperous. The meals we ate in Southern Italy seemed much closer to the Mediterranean diet, emphasizing fruits, vegetables, olive oil, nuts, legumes and whole grains, which is touted to be healthy in so many ways.

As we drove past vineyards, olive and lemon trees and herds of sheep, I thought about my grandmother who came from Sicily when she was 12 years old, more than a century ago. Starvation drove her parents to bring her and her siblings to the United States. Others on our tour shared similar stories about their relatives.

My grandmother brought this way of cooking with her. When she prepared food for her nine children, husband and other relatives during the Great Depression, beans and greens, polenta and pasta with beans figured prominently, with a bit of grated pecorino Romano cheese. They had little money, but their meals were healthy and filling.

While the latest research provides valuable findings that guide our choices, our Italian relatives also offer clues to eating healthy, even many years later.