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Is the Mediterranean Diet Really Healthier?
Mediterranean Diet Tomato Sauces May Prevent Cancer
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Healthy Diets from Around the World: The Mediterranean Diet
Setting
the recipe straight: Forget pasta if you want real Mediterranean food.
 Ask
Ancel Keys, 96, the secret of his long life, and he's likely to point to
tonight's meal: baked cod fillets flavored with lemon juice and a bit of olive
oil, steamed broccoli, roasted potatoes, and a glass of white wine.
It's
quintessentially Mediterranean fare, befitting the man who first promoted the
health benefits of the Mediterranean diet. As a young scientist more than 50
years ago, Keys showed that among people in countries where fresh fruits and
vegetables are plentiful and olive oil flows freely -- Greece, southern Italy,
southern France, and parts of North Africa and the Middle East -- heart disease
is exceedingly rare. In countries where people fill their plates with beef,
cheese, and other foods high in saturated fat -- places like the United States
-- it's a leading cause of death.
Thanks
to Keys' efforts, the Mediterranean diet and way of cooking have become
synonymous with good health. But the cuisine that's touted as the healthiest in
the world has taken some knocks lately.
 In
the past few years, Italian scientists have linked bread, pasta, and rice made
from refined grains (think white bread) to an increased risk of certain cancers,
particularly thyroid, colon, and stomach cancers. Two separate nutrition studies
published in 1998 found similar results. Meanwhile, the Center for Science in
the Public Interest (CSPI) issued a scathing report on the food served in
Italian restaurants. Menu staples like fettuccine Alfred are often laden with as
much saturated fat as three pints of butter-almond ice cream, the center found.
A serving of fried calamari may have the cholesterol equivalent of a four-egg
omelet.
When
a Good Diet Goes Bad
Those
entrées are a long way from the foods that Keys first promoted. The original
Mediterranean diet was that eaten by rural villagers on the Greek island of
Crete. "The Mediterranean diet was nearly vegetarian, with fish and very
little meat, and was rich in green vegetables and fruits," says Keys, who
is now a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota. People living on
Crete got more than one-third of their calories from fat, most of it from olive
oil, which is rich in monounsaturated fatty acids. They also consumed wine every
day.
Unfortunately,
something got lost in the translation when these traditional diets were brought
to America. "They may call it Italian, but it's very different from the
food we studied," says Keys, who for the past three decades has divided his
time between Minneapolis and a small village 40 miles south of Naples, Italy, on
the shores of the Mediterranean. "What happens here is we add a great deal
of meat, also sugar, and a lot of cream sauces."
 Buca
di Beppo, Honolulu, Hawaii (it's
great)
It's
Great Food and Great Fun, A really Great Place for A Party, and not expensive
for what you get.
Jayne Hurley, RD,
the senior nutritionist who helped conduct the survey of Italian restaurants for
CSPI, agrees. "We're not saying Italian food is unhealthy," says
Hurley. "But the food we saw had been Americanized." While the
traditional diets used cheese and meat sparingly as a condiment, for instance,
our versions are typically loaded with them. Spaghetti, as served in the United
States, often includes a generous helping of grated cheese and up to a pound of
ground meat, says Nancy Harmon Jenkins, a food writer and author of The
Mediterranean Diet Cookbook.
"Traditional
food can easily become corrupted from simple ignorance of the cook," says
Paula Wolfert, a San Francisco-based author of several Mediterranean-style
cookbooks. At one restaurant she visited, Moroccan kebabs were made with pork.
"The population of Morocco is predominantly Muslim, and they don't eat pork
products," she says. Kebabs are traditionally made from lamb, chicken, or
fish.
What's
more, many breads and pastas are no longer prepared the traditional way. Refined
flours were never part of the original Mediterranean diet, says K. Dun Gifford,
president of the Oldways Preservation and Exchange Trust, a food education and
policy group based in Massachusetts. The diet that Keys studied was one eaten by
poor farmers and laborers, who ate whole grain breads and pastas. "White
flour was more expensive than whole grain flour," says Gifford, who has
earned a reputation as a crusader for back-to-the-basics cooking. "We call
it peasant bread, or rough country bread."
Recapturing
the Mediterranean Ideal
With
a few careful choices, you can still treat yourself to one of the world's
healthiest -- and most delicious -- cuisines. Here are four tips to get you
started.
- #
1 Fill your plate with fresh fruits and vegetables. The people of
Crete were called mangifolia, which means "leaf-eaters," because
they consumed so many leafy green vegetables, foraged from the steep
hillsides of the island. Fruits and vegetables are low in calories and fat
and very rich in nutrients, including cancer-fighting antioxidants.
-
#
2 If you're dining out, look for entrees with plenty of vegetables and
very little cream or cheese-- a vegetarian pasta tossed in olive
oil and a little parmesan cheese, for instance, or grilled fish served
with steamed vegetables.
-
#
3 When buying bread, choose loaves made with whole grains and flours. Refined
foods cause blood sugar levels to spike because they are so easily
digested, says David Jacobs Jr, PhD, professor of epidemiology at the
University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Less processed, whole grain ones
provide a more sustained level of energy over a longer period, making them
more healthful, says Keys.
-
#
4 For dessert, choose something that provides one serving of fruit.
Tonight, at his home in Minneapolis, Keys ends his meal with a dessert
that perfectly reflects the Mediterranean ideal: baked apple slices,
sprinkled lightly with cinnamon and sugar.
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Healthy Diets from Around the World: The Mediterranean Diet. Baked cod fillets flavored with lemon juice and a bit of olive
oil, steamed broccoli, roasted potatoes, and a glass of white wine. Health benefits of the Mediterranean diet.
Fresh fruits and
vegetables are plentiful and olive oil flows freely -- Greece, southern Italy,
southern France, and parts of North Africa and the Middle East -- heart disease
is exceedingly rare. Diet was nearly vegetarian, with fish and very
little meat, and was rich in green vegetables and fruits. Buca
di Beppo, Honolulu, Hawaii (it's great). It's
Great Food and Great Fun, A really Great Place for A Party, and not expensive
for what you get. Whole grain breads and pastas and
fresh fruits and vegetables. "leaf-eaters," cancer-fighting antioxidants. vegetarian pasta tossed in olive
oil, baked apple slices,
sprinkled lightly with cinnamon and sugar
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