The Minister for Public Health and her regional counterparts are studying the idea of asking restaurants not to serve wine or beer with their menus del día.

They also want them to include more Mediterranean-diet-type dishes amongst their meals.

The draft document for the Estrategia en Salud Cardiovascular del Sistema Nacional de Salud (Escav) was debated yesterday at the meeting of regional health ministers (Consejo Interterritorial de Salud), which covers a wider range of measures to counter cardiovascular illnesses (heart diseases).

The document calls for the “cooperation from the restaurant sector in the fostering of the Mediterranean Diet as a healthy-heart food without including alcohol to accompany meals.”

Other ideas included in the draft are: the obligation for restaurants to provide tap water for drinking free of charge; more physical exercise at school; processed products and alcohol to be excluded from expending machines and campaigns against trash food. This would include food commercials and making mediterranean-diet products cheaper through fiscal policies.

The idea is to give ample leeway to each autonomous region to establish their own criteria.

The Minister explained, however, that the strategy is to establish recommendations and not prohibitions of any kind. Therefore it would be false to say that beer and wine would be eliminated (through obligation) from menus de día.

Editorial comment: blood will run in the streets and anarchy will prevail if wine were eliminated from menus del día! On the other hand, it would be a good excuse for restaurants who found themselves having to offer these cheaper eating deals during the darker time, to do away with them and offer just la carta, full stop.

(News: Spain)