Is the Mediterranean Diet Good for Me?

That’s a good question and to find out whether the Mediterranean diet is good for you, me or your next door neighbour, we first need to understand it. If you live in civilised society, chances are you’re inundated with information about olive oil, salads, and whole grains being healthy, mostly by way of diets like the South Beach diet and this one. You’ve probably slowed down while crossing the organic foods aisle in the supermarket, wondering if the Mediterranean diet is good for you, and if you should switch from heavy meals to light salads and grilled fish. It’s the hype around the Mediterranean diet that makes you do this and the idea that, despite their dull performance in the 2010 World Cup so far, the Italians enjoy greater health than you.

What do the Italians, Greeks, and Spanish have to do with the Mediterranean diet? Well, it’s their strip of land, isn’t it? In 1945, Ancel Keys, an American doctor working in Italy, realised that the dietary habits of the poor coastal areas of Spain, Italy, Crete and Greece were remarkably healthy. He wrote home about the Mediterranean diet’s virtues, much like Giacomo Castelvetro did in early Renaissance England, but it wasn’t till the 1960s that the diet gained momentum worldwide. By the 1990s, when Harvard University’s, Dr Walter Willett, presented his version of the Mediterranean diet, everyone was ready to listen. While Giacomo Castelvetro failed to convince the English to eat their vegetables and fruits, Dr Walter Willet succeeded in convincing the world that the Mediterranean diet is indeed good for every one.

Why is the Mediterranean Diet Good for Me? The Mediterranean diet has what most marketing campaigns kill for – living examples of its success, and it doesn’t hurt that these living examples are fine Mediterranean specimens in great health, of great physique and with interesting accents. Several independent studies have found that despite a high fat diet, people living in the Mediterranean countries have much lower rates of cardiovascular diseases than their counterparts in other countries. Why? Here’s a Mediterranean Diet chart, courtesy Mediterranean Book, to help us understand that:

The Mediterranean Diet Guideline for Novices:

1. Eat your vegetables and fruits –7 to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables daily.
2. Switch to whole grains – The lesser it’s processed the better it is.
3. Nut it out – Almonds, pistachios, cashews, walnuts, they’re all good.
4. Switch from animals and dairy fats to olive oil or canola oil.
5. Spice instead of salt – Use herbs and spices instead of extra salt.
6. Eat fish – Once or twice a week.
7. Red meat becomes a treat – Only recommended about once or twice a month. If you’re a regular red meat eater. you’ll have to replace it with fish and poultry.
8. Drink a lot of wine – Not a lot, but a couple of measures a day are good for you.
9. Drink 6-8 glasses of water a day.

A Second Look at whether the Mediterranean Diet is Good for You, or Not: Every day new studies pop up about how the Mediterranean diet helps fight cardiovascular diseases, depression, hormonal imbalances, and just about everything short of cynicism. But one particular hypothesis suggests that the Mediterranean belt’s differential exposure to solar ultraviolet radiation could be the reason why the Mediterraneans enjoy better cardiovascular health than their western and northern counterparts. Add to that the fact that the Mediterraneans are known to be fit and physically active people. In conclusion, the Mediterranean diet is good for you and for the rest of us as well, but to really make it work all of us need to migrate to the Mediterranean, because living healthy is an important life goal that must be achieved at any cost.