The Mediterranean Diet, Can It Help You?

Imagine a plate of steaming pasta, topped with a rich sauce of olive oil, pine nuts, Parmesan cheese, cracked olives, cilantro and garlic. Balance the day with food choices such as fish, hard cheeses, nuts, fresh fruits and vegetables and a variety of grain products like couscous, bulgur, breads, polenta and you have the typical fare of the Mediterranean region.

Does the Mediterranean Diet lower your health risks?

Cross-cultural studies conducted in the early 1970's found that people in this corner of the world, which includes Greece, Spain, Southern Italy, Southern France, Lebanon Tunisia and Morocco, reap health benefits from their unique cuisine. Most notably, they have a lower incidence of heart disease and stroke -- Plus, they also have one of the longest life expectancies in the world. This discovery paired with the high incidence of heart disease in the United States has influenced the scientific community to search for an explanation.

While it is possible to think that we all might have lower disease rates if we lived in this beautiful area of the world, controlled studies (that means well-conducted scientific studies) have been able to separate the effects of lifestyle and diet to show that diet does indeed play a strong role in this benefit. The Lyon Heart Study published in 1998 showed heart attack patients who ate a Mediterranean cuisine had fewer second heart attacks, angina (chest pain), surgical intervention (such as bypass surgery), and actually reduced their risk of death from heart disease. So what is it about the Mediterranean cuisine that has this effect?

Find out in Part 2 of our series (Coming Soon)