From diet to alcohol, Italian lifestyles increasingly less healthy and more similar to Northern Europe

Italy has an increasingly older face with an average age of the population of 46.6 years in 2024, set to reach 50.8 years in 2050, difficulties in access to care, and now also less healthy lifestyles that are increasingly similar to those in northern Europe, especially in terms of diet and alcohol consumption. This is the picture taken by the XXII edition of the Osservasalute 2025 Report, an analysis of the population's state of health and the quality of healthcare in the Italian regions presented in Rome at the Università Cattolica.

According to the report, there is a growing incidence of chronic diseases that not only reduce people's health but also their happiness. While in the face of growing health needs, public health spending remains among the lowest of the OECD countries.

The most widespread chronic disease is hypertension: in 2023, around 11 million people claim to suffer from it, corresponding to 18.9 per cent of the entire population (almost one in five). Among the elderly, it is estimated that one person in two is hypertensive. The chronic diseases mainly affecting women are arthrosis, arthritis and osteoporosis, from which more than one in five women (22.6%) suffer, compared to 10.5% of males. Overall, these diseases affect almost 10 million people (16.7%), of whom about 6 million 500 thousand are over 65 years old (46.3%).

Chronic diseases, the report explains, are the result of bad lifestyles and little prevention. So, while the world looks to the Mediterranean model as a healthy and sustainable reference point, Italians seem to be progressively moving away from it. Fewer than one Italian in five (18.5%) remains truly faithful to the Mediterranean diet. In 2023, about eight out of ten people consume fruit and vegetables daily, but of these only 5.3% reach 5 portions a day. It is therefore not surprising that almost half of Italians, 46.4%, experience overweight or obesity. The relationship with alcohol is also changing, with consumption typical of Northern Europe, often concentrated at weekends and associated with beer and spirits, with the spread of occasional consumption rising from 41.2% of the population aged 11 or over in 2013, to 48.9% in 2023; similarly, consumption outside meals has increased (from 25.8% to 32.4%).

In addition to overweight, there is another metabolic pathology that is taking on the connotations of a health emergency, especially if placed in relation to the related health costs: diabetes, which in the two-year period 2022-2023 affected about 5% of the adult population aged 18-69, but this is probably an underestimate. Prevention, on the other hand, remains the Italian Cinderella, with low adherence to screening, especially oncological screening.