Experts Offer Tips on Adopting the Mediterranean Diet

Summary

The Mediterranean diet, rooted in tra­di­tions sur­round­ing the Mediterranean Sea, pro­motes healthy eat­ing through fresh, sea­sonal foods, mod­er­ate exer­cise, and social­iza­tion. The diet empha­sizes veg­eta­bles with extra vir­gin olive oil as the main source of fat, and has been shown to reduce the risk of chronic ill­nesses while being easy to fol­low for begin­ners. Extra vir­gin olive oil plays a piv­otal role in the diet, con­tribut­ing to its health ben­e­fits and being rec­om­mended for var­i­ous cook­ing uses, mak­ing it a key ingre­di­ent in the Mediterranean way of eat­ing.

The Mediterranean diet, the world’s most cel­e­brated dietary regime, has its roots in eat­ing tra­di­tions that flour­ished in the coun­tries sur­round­ing the Mediterranean Sea.

The diet com­bines mod­er­ate exer­cise, ade­quate rest­ing and social­iza­tion with healthy eat­ing. It pro­motes fresh, sea­sonal foods and ingre­di­ents and has been gain­ing sig­nif­i­cant atten­tion world­wide for its health ben­e­fits and sus­tain­able approach to eat­ing.

“The Mediterranean diet fea­tures low gly­caemic car­bo­hy­drates and has healthy, pre­dom­i­nantly unsat­u­rated fats and high qual­ity pro­teins often from beans and other legumes,” Simon Poole, a Cambridge-based med­ical doc­tor, author and health con­sul­tant who has spent years inves­ti­gat­ing the mechan­ics of the Mediterranean diet, told Olive Oil Times.

“It has been shown to be an extra­or­di­nar­ily healthy and sus­tain­able pat­tern of eat­ing which reduces the risk of many chronic ill­nesses includ­ing heart dis­ease, stroke, many types of can­cer, dia­betes, inflam­ma­tory dis­or­ders and Alzheimer’s demen­tia,” Poole added.

There are no com­pli­cated rules to fol­low when fol­low­ing the Mediterranean eat­ing pat­tern. However, some fun­da­men­tal con­cepts must be remem­bered to fully reap the diet’s ben­e­fits.

The cor­ner­stone of the diet is the com­bi­na­tion of veg­eta­bles with extra vir­gin olive oil, found in dishes across the Mediterranean basin.

“There are many dif­fer­ent regional ver­sions of the tra­di­tional Mediterranean diet, which can include types of foods and prac­tices spe­cific to a par­tic­u­lar coun­try or area,” Poole said.

“The com­mon denom­i­na­tor of the diet through­out the Mediterranean, how­ever, is the sig­nif­i­cant vari­ety and quan­tity of col­or­ful veg­eta­bles con­sumed together with olive oil as the main source of fat for cook­ing and fla­vor­ing,” he added.

Vegetables are rich in dif­fer­ent nutri­ents accord­ing to their color and inten­sity. Each color car­ries its own phy­to­chem­i­cals, the nat­ural com­pounds that strengthen the plants’ immune sys­tem. Consuming a rain­bow of col­ored fruits and veg­eta­bles ensures that the human body receives var­i­ous nutri­ents that can pro­tect it from chronic dis­eases.

In the Mediterranean diet, con­sum­ing more veg­eta­bles more often means includ­ing veg­etable casseroles like the Greek ​‘lath­era’ in a weekly meal plan rather than resort­ing to dishes such as pasta mixed with greens, which can often be high in car­bo­hy­drates.

While veg­eta­bles and fruits should be in everyone’s every­day vocab­u­lary when embrac­ing the Mediterranean way of eat­ing, other typ­i­cal foods of the Mediterranean diet include whole grains, beans and other legumes, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices.

“Ultra processed foods have no pres­ence in the diet, with red meat con­sumed in smaller amounts and gen­er­ally replaced with plant sources of pro­tein, fish or poul­try,” Poole said.

For absolute begin­ners, Poole sug­gested that a first-time Mediterranean super­mar­ket bas­ket should con­tain two por­tions of veg­eta­bles, one por­tion of fruits such as grapes or blue­ber­ries, nuts, beans, olive oil, herbs and spices.

“Consuming a mod­er­ate amount of fer­mented dairy like yogurt and cheese, espe­cially from goat or sheep milk is also very much part of every day,” he said. ​“Desserts mainly con­sist of fruit dishes with occa­sional added sug­ars usu­ally com­ing from honey.”

Nancy Harmon Jenkins, an author and author­ity on Mediterranean cuisines, said switch­ing to the Mediterranean diet is fairly easy.

“Ingredients are for the most part eas­ily avail­able in most American mar­kets and the tech­niques involved are straight­for­ward and don’t require a cook­ing school back­ground,” Jenkins said.

She noted, how­ever, that Americans are hes­i­tant about increas­ing their daily con­sump­tion of veg­eta­bles.

“I have never under­stood the American resis­tance to veg­eta­bles, unless it comes from the fact that most peo­ple don’t have access to fresh fla­vors,” she said. ​“We do need to con­sume more fruits and veg­eta­bles and doing it the Mediterranean way is prob­a­bly the eas­i­est.”

“Take any green, from spinach to broc­coli to my new favorite esca­role, steam it or cook it until just limp in a small amount of salty water, then drain it and return it to the cook­ing pot with a chopped clove of gar­lic and two table­spoons of olive oil,” Jenkins added. ​“Toss over heat until the greens are fully cooked and then serve as is, per­haps with a spritz of lemon juice over the top.”

Poole high­lighted the piv­otal role of extra vir­gin olive oil in the Mediterranean diet and its con­tri­bu­tion to the regime’s health ben­e­fits.

“There is no sin­gle ingre­di­ent which is com­pa­ra­ble to olive oil in its con­tri­bu­tion as a pro­por­tion of calo­ries or its ubiq­ui­tous pres­ence in any other diet in the world,” he said.

“Not only does the oleic acid pro­mote good cho­les­terol lev­els, but it also has anti­in­flam­ma­tory effects and can sup­port healthy glu­cose reg­u­la­tion,” Poole added. ​“The polyphe­nols in extra vir­gin olive oil, often char­ac­ter­ized by the pleas­ant bit­ter and pun­gent notes in a good qual­ity oil, have impor­tant antiox­i­dant and anti-inflam­ma­tory effects.”

He added that com­bin­ing extra vir­gin olive oil with other foods can be highly ben­e­fi­cial.

“Extra vir­gin used for fry­ing fish, for exam­ple, has been shown to pro­tect the fish oils from break­down and with veg­eta­bles, many of the nutri­ents and polyphe­nols released dur­ing cook­ing are absorbed and exchanged in extra vir­gin olive oil, lead­ing to increased absorp­tion and avail­abil­ity,” he said.

Jenkins sug­gested using dif­fer­ent types of olive oil for other cook­ing uses: an expen­sive, recently-har­vested extra vir­gin olive oil to use raw in sal­ads and gar­nish­ing soups and a less costly but still extra vir­gin oil for cook­ing and fry­ing.

“I would rec­om­mend invest­ing in excel­lent olive oil, as well as the best pasta, rice and dried beans that you can afford,” she said. ​“Meat and fish should also be the best you can afford but not nec­es­sar­ily the most expen­sive. The Mediterranean diet is full of recipes for using cheaper cuts of meat, cheaper kinds of seafood.”

Another prac­ti­cal idea that works is to use last year’s extra vir­gin olive oil for cook­ing, pro­vided that it has been stored prop­erly and the new season’s extra vir­gin olive oil for top­ping a Greek salad or mak­ing an olive oil-based cake.

“Be aware that there are no bar­gains in extra vir­gin,” Jenkins said. ​“It is an expen­sive prod­uct for good rea­sons, and if you find a steeply dis­counted oil that’s because it has a defect, most often being that it’s severely out of date.”

When embrac­ing the Mediterranean eat­ing pat­tern, there are myr­iad recipes avail­able from var­i­ous resources, includ­ing books, arti­cles and online mate­r­ial.

Even so, new­com­ers to the Mediterranean diet may lose their foot­ing as they famil­iar­ize them­selves with its ins and outs. However, the diet’s relaxed, flex­i­ble approach to enjoy­ing good food is the key to seam­lessly get­ting back on track.

“The Mediterranean diet is not meant to be restric­tive but rather cel­e­bra­tory of the good fla­vors in really good ingre­di­ents,” Jenkins said. 

“But let’s say you slip up and add but­ter and sour cream to your baked potato, instead of a dol­lop of the very best extra vir­gin olive oil,” she added. ​“No one is col­lect­ing points, so you can just make up for it by hav­ing a salad with an olive oil dress­ing, full of healthy greens and other veg­eta­bles, on the side with your naughty baked potato.”

“Do remem­ber that extra vir­gin olive oil is very good for you but it is, in the end, a fat,” Jenkins con­cluded. ​“Don’t add it to a diet that’s already high in fat. Use it instead, sub­sti­tute it for more com­mon fats. You won’t regret it and, you know, you just might lose some weight when you do.”

• Nutrition Australia