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Nine for 2009: Nine ways to healthier eating, Mediterranean style.

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Nine for 2009: Nine ways to healthier eating, Mediterranean style

There are good reasons to follow the traditional diets of Greece and Italy.

If you're thinking about New Year's resolutions, consider making 2009 the year you try eating the Mediterranean way. Picture a plate full of fresh vegetables, tasty grains, and fish or beans prepared with olive oil and sprinklings of herbs, spices, cheeses, and nuts, accompanied by a glass of red wine and some hearty bread. These are key components of the traditional, largely plant-based diet of countries surrounding the Mediterranean. It's not only delicious but also appears to protect against heart disease and many other chronic conditions.

A Mediterranean-style diet isn't the only traditional eating pattern that's good for your health. But it's been studied the longest, and it's practical for most Americans. It also fits in nicely with the latest approach to nutrition. Experts stress overall eating patterns rather than "magic bullets" that don't always live up to their advertising (for example, vitamin E, beta carotene, and isoflavones). Individual nutrients are important * for one thing, they can help to correct deficiencies * but the greatest health benefits are likely to result from the synergy of many foods with different nutrient qualities.

History of the "Mediterranean diet"

The Mediterranean region is culturally diverse, and its inhabitants don't all eat the same way. But a typical Mediterranean dietary pattern was identified in the late 1950s as part of the landmark Seven Countries Study, led by Ancel Keys of the University of Minnesota. Keys spent more than a decade studying lifestyle, particularly the influence of diet, and its relationship to cardiovascular disease in nearly 13,000 men in Finland, southern Italy, the Greek islands of Corfu and Crete, Japan, Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, and the United States. Keys was particularly interested in dietary fat and was one of the first to recognize that there are "good" fats and "bad" fats, noting that despite limited medical care and sometimes high fat consumption (in Crete, for example, up to 40% of calories came from fat), the Greek and Italian participants lived the longest and had the lowest rates of heart disease (so did the Japanese, whose diets contained very little fat). The fats consumed in Greece and Italy were generally unsaturated, deriving mainly from olive oil and fish. The highest rates of heart disease were found in countries where people consumed the most saturated fat (for example, Finland and the...

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