When I think of traditional American food, I think of a combination of fast food, apple pie, chips and soda. Maybe that’s not an entirely accurate picture, but the American diet does include a lot of high calorie, fat and sodium items, the hallmarks of fast food.
So when we’re looking at how to make our diets healthier, we often turn to other cultures. An Asian diet contains a lot more fish, vegetables and plant-based, unprocessed foods. And the Mediterranean diet is cited as extremely healthy due to the prevalence of fruit and vegetables, legumes, olive oil and fish. Take a look at the Mediterranean Diet Pyramid below (courtesy of The New York Times) to see how this diet focuses on unprocessed, natural foods.
Recently there have been several articles regarding the Mediterranean diet. The British Medical Journal recently published a review of 12 studies that examined the Mediterranean diet as it relates to health. These studies followed more than 1.5 million people over a period of anywhere from 3 to 18 years. The results showed that individuals following this type of diet had lower rates of death due to cardiovascular disease (9%) and cancer (6%) and a lower incidence of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s (13%). These results reinforce what we’ve been hearing for a long time.
Many credit a study that was published in the early 1990s with the increased prevalence of Mediterranean food in American cooking and eating. Foods like hummus, olive oil and balsamic vinegar, are more widely used and are becoming a staple of many Americans’ diets.
But on the flip-side, we seem to be exporting a lot of our dietary habits to the Mediterranean region. Recent reports show that ¾ of adults in Greece are now overweight (the highest incidence in Europe) and doctors in Greece are reporting soaring rates of obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure among children. The culprit seems to be the introduction of fast food and convenience foods – a very Western phenomenon. The impact, even in such a short period of time, is amazing.
So it seems that while we can glean a lot from the Mediterranean diet, individuals in this region can learn a lot from their history too. And if you know of other cultural diets that are healthy, please share your ideas here.
Kerry
