The Mediterranean Diet: What Foods Can You Eat and What Are the Health Benefits?
Why the Mediterranean Region?
The diets of countries like Spain, Italy, Greece, Morocco, and Tunisia are similar but not identical. However, they share several common elements, particularly an emphasis on fresh vegetables and fruits, whole grain breads, nuts and seeds, fish, wine, and vast quantities of olive oil. In the 1950s, Dr. Ancel Keys, an American researcher, moved to Italy and noticed that few people in the region suffered from heart disease. His findings sparked research into the Mediterranean diet that continues to this day.
Foods and Drink to Include in the Mediterranean Diet
Classic Mediterranean meals are composed of fresh, unprocessed foods heavy on vegetables, fruits, nuts, monounsaturated fats, the occasional fish or wine and is light on meat, dairy and saturated fats. To begin changing your diet to a more Mediterranean one and reaping the potential health benefits, try the following tips:
Add a wide variety of vegetables into your diet. Fresh, frozen or canned makes little difference, so don’t feel you have to splurge on expensive out-of-season fresh produce.
Mix it up by varying the color and texture of the vegetables you eat. Soft, red, lycopene-rich tomatoes and crunchy green broccoli both provide highly beneficial, yet different, nutrients to your diet. Try purple eggplant, orange peppers, deep magenta beets, white cauliflower, blue-green kale. Also try cooking or dressing vegetables in olive oil instead of butter to ditch the saturated fat and take advantage of olive oil’s monounsaturated fat.
All of the above goes for fruits as well, though they, being sweet, should be eaten more moderately than vegetables. Think of fruit as dessert: sliced fresh peaches, or a bowl of berries, cubes of melon, a juicy mango.
Emphasize vegetarian sources of protein while going light on the animal proteins. Choose beans, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. Whole grains like quinoa contain surprisingly high amounts of protein, and they contain micronutrients that refined flours have had stripped out of them. Eat fish a few times a week, and other meats a few times a month. Avoid bacon and other highly processed meats, including lunch meats, entirely.
Seek out monounsaturated sources of fat while cutting back on saturated fat. The diet in Mediterranean countries is 35% to 40% fat, so don’t worry too much about getting too many of your calories from fat. You’ll be looking for olive and canola oil, nuts and seeds (high in monounsaturated fat as well as the protein mentioned previously), olives, and avocados.
Cut back on:
- dairy
- white flour
- sugar
- white rice
- butter
- lard
- mayonnaise
- meat
- processed foods
What Are the Health Benefits?
Research into the health benefits of eating Mediterranean style has shown a relationship between several nutritional compounds that the diet is heavy in and improved health. It is low in saturated fat, with most and sometimes all of its fat coming from monounsaturated sources — think olives, nuts, avocados and olive and canola oil — which has been linked to lower incidence of heart disease.
The diet is also rich in omega-3 fatty acids, especially alpha-linolenic acid, which is found in plants. Omega-3s are also believed to protect against heart disease. High levels of micronutrients found in the Mediterranean region’s colorful array of vegetables and fruits, as well as in wine, help to do the following:
- lower blood pressure
- lower cholesterol
- lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease
- lower the risk of diabetes
- lower the risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
- improves rheumatoid arthritis
- lower risk of cancer
- lower risk of Parkinson’s disease
One additional, and pleasant benefit of eating Mediterranean is weight loss. The diet is so high in fiber and satiating fats that people often lose weight once adopting the diet. However, registered dieticians caution that people should use the “two-handed” method of measuring oils: one hand tipping the bottle while the other hand holds a measuring spoon. While the diet is chock-full of healthy fats, it can be easy to overdo it with oil weighing in at 120 calories per tablespoon.
It’s Not Just About Health; It’s About Taste
This is a very tasty diet, with fresh, varied food that appeals to nearly every palate. It consists of simple dishes that are bold on flavor and varied in their ingredients. Try whole-grain pasta covered in vegetable-packed marinara sauce, or sauteéd chunks of zucchini next to thick slices of fresh tomatoes from the garden with a serving of grilled fish, alongside some whole-wheat bread served with a plate of olive oil for dipping. If your plate is round, draw a line down the middle. One half is vegetables, the other half is whole grains and protein.
The Mediterranean diet has been researched for over 50 years, and the verdict so far is that the region’s classic diet of olive oil, vegetables and fruits, whole grains, nuts and seeds and occasional fish is closely linked to a long life relatively free of chronic disease. Eating like the Italians or Moroccans do can lead to better health and weight loss. It has the added bonus of being a pleasant, satisfying way of eating that doesn’t require specialty foods or a lot of time in the kitchen.
References
The Mediterranean Diet: A Healthy Choice? https://www.netwellness.uc.edu/healthtopics/diet/nutribyte0405.cfm
Mediterranean Diets: https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/f-w00/mediterr.html
Weighing in with the Mediteranean Diet: https://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/columnnn/nn090122.html
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