A Mediterranean diet, the New England Journal of Medicine reported last week, can lengthen one's life span. So inhabitants of southern Europe can look forward to long lives — of anxiety and privation.

Already mired in a depression comparable to that of the 1930s, Spain, Greece and Portugal are going to see things grow worse this year, according to an annual economic forecast released by the European Commission.

Unemployment rates in both Spain and Greece — where a quarter of the populations are unemployed and the share of jobless young people exceeds 50 percent — will rise to 27 percent.