"Improving on the Mediterranean Diet"
The traditional Mediterranean diet can be considered as a mainly,
but not exclusive plant-based diet,
and certainly not a whole food plant based diet,
as olive oil and wine can be considered essentially fruit juices.
Even if one is eating a vegiterranean diet,
an entirely plant-based version,
there are a number of problematic nutritional aspects
that are rarely talked about.
For example, lots of white bread, white pasta,
not a lot of whole grains. alcohol can be a problem,
the caloric density with all that oil can be high,
as well as the salt intake.
Let’s go over these one by one.
In this anatomy of the health effects of the Mediterranean diet
while the single most important component was the high consumption of plant foods.
In contrast, high cereal consumption,
meaning high grain consumption did not appear to help.
This may be because most grains modern Mediterranean dieters eat
are refined, like white bread,
whereas the traditional Mediterranean diet
was characterized by unprocessed cereals—
in other words, whole grains.
And while whole grains have been associated with lower risk
of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer,
refined grain may increase the risk of diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and other chronic diseases.
For example in the PREDIMED study, whose who ate the most white bread,
but not whole grain bread, gained significant weight.
Alcohol may also be a problem.
As a plant-centered diet, no surprise,
adherence to a Mediterranean diet is associated with lower cancer risk,
but not with lower breast cancer risk.
With all the fruits veggies nuts seeds and beans and low saturated fat
you’d assume there would be lower breast cancer risk,
but alcohol is a known breast-cancer risk factor, even moderate amounts.
But if you create a special adapted version of the Mediterranean diet score
that excludes alcohol, the diet DOES appear to reduce breast cancer risk then.
The wonderful grape phytonutrients in red wine can improve our arterial function
such that if you drink de-alcoholized red wine,
red wine with the alcohol removed,
you get a significant boost in endothelial function,
the abiity of our arteries to relax and dilate normally, increasing blood flow,
but if you drink the same red wine with the alcohol added back,
it abolishes the beneficial effect,
it counteracts the benefit of the grape phytonutrients.
So better just to eat grapes.
Similarly, there are components of olives—
the antioxidant phytonutrients, that may help endothelial function,
but when consumed as oil even extra virgin olive oil,
it may impair arterial function.
So even if white bread bread dipped in olive oil
is the very symbol of the Mediterranean diet,
we can modernize it by removing oils and refined grains.
Another important, albeit frequently ignored, issue
in the modern Mediterranean diet is sodium intake.
Despite evidence linking salt intake to high blood pressure, heart disease and strokes,
dietary salt intake in the U.S. is on the rise.
Right now we get about 7 to 10 grams a day,
mostly from processed foods.
If we were to decrease that just by 3 grams,
which is about a thousand mg of sodium,
half of a teaspoon of table salt,
every year we could save tens of thousands of people
from having a heart attack,
prevent tens of thousands of strokes,
and tens of thousands of deaths.
There is a common misconception that only certain people
should reduce their salt intake
and that for the vast majority of the population salt reduction is unnecessary,
but in reality, the opposite is true.
But there is much we can learn from the traditional Mediterranean diet.
The defining characteristic of the Mediterranean diet
is an abundance of plant foods
And one thing that seems to have fallen by the wayside.
No main Mediterranean meal is replete without lots of greens,
a key part of not only a good Mediterranean diet,
but of any good diet.