Introduction The corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic forced most of the Italian population into lockdown from 11 March to 18 May 2020. A nationwide survey of Italian Clinical Nutrition and Dietetic Services (Obesity Centers or OCs) was carried out to assess the impact of lockdown restrictions on the physical and mental wellbeing of patients with obesity (PWO) who had follow-up appointments postponed due to lockdown restrictions and to compare determinants of weight gain before and after the pandemic. Methods We designed a structured 77-item questionnaire covering employment status, diet, physical activity and psychological aspects, that was disseminated through follow-up calls and online between 2 May and 25 June 2020. Data were analyzed by multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and multiple linear regression. Results A total of 1,232 PWO from 26 OCs completed the questionnaires (72% female, mean age 50.2 ± 14.2 years; mean BMI 34.7 ± 7.6 kg/m2; 41% obesity class II to III). During the lockdown, 48.8% gained, 27.1% lost, while the remainder (24.1%) maintained their weight. The mean weight change was +2.3 ± 4.8 kg (in weight gainers: +4.0 ± 2.4 kg; +4.2% ± 5.4%). Approximately 37% of participants experienced increased emotional difficulties, mostly fear and dissatisfaction. Sixty-one percent reduced their physical activity (PA) and 55% experienced a change in sleep quality/quantity. The lack of online contact (37.5%) with the OC during lockdown strongly correlated with weight gain (p < 0.001). Using MCA, two main clusters were identified: those with unchanged or even improved lifestyles during lockdown (Cluster 1) and those with worse lifestyles during the same time (Cluster 2). The latter includes unemployed people experiencing depression, boredom, dissatisfaction and increased food contemplation and weight gain. Within Cluster 2, homemakers reported gaining weight and experiencing anger due to home confinement. Conclusions Among Italian PWO, work status, emotional dysregulation, and lack of online communication with OCs were determinants of weight gain during the lockdown period.

In this article, I will assemble a comparative frame within which to read social practices connected with the construction/production of collective cultural identities in some Sicilian contexts. The case studies I collect refer to different historical periods (some Sicilian guides to 18th and 19th centuries Grand Tour voyagers, a few poor youths interacting with a gay German baron in 19th- and 20th-century Taormina, and two tour “guides” living today in a Sicilian UNESCO World Heritage List site) and have an unequal analytic thickness (ranging from a pre-textual episode in Taormina where a Sicilian male tour guide interacts with two young European female tourists, to a very long ethnographic experience in a southeastern Sicilian town). Crisscrossing these case studies, I would like to achieve two analytical goals. First, I hope to shed light on some distinctive traits of the historical process through which Sicily and Sicilians entered, and accommodated themselves with, a hegemonic “global hierarchy of value.” Secondly, drawing from some recent critical interpretations, I will discuss the analytical relevance of Michael Herzfeld’s notion of “cultural intimacy” to read the historical and social process I describe.

That church then, in which men were born again to a state of grace by means of the first Sacrament of the Christian world, is called the Mother of all the Churches: and such was the Church of Jerusalem. The very fact of being first brings with it the greatest antiquity: because those who say first, say the oldest. Id prius, quod ab initio. Tert. Adv. Marcio. The greatest antiquity has the greatest dignity as its inseparable companion: so that those who, when speaking of the Churches, say the oldest, also say the worthiest: thus those who, according to a principle of conversion, say the worthiest, also say the oldest (Anonymous 1792:16).

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