OT: NY Times Opinion Piece on Mediterranean Diet

The NY Times published an opinion piece today titled "How to Get America On the Mediterranean Diet". In light of recent and past discussions about diet here about diet, it may provide an interesting take for those interested Here is a section of the article




In 1953, not long before President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in office, the social scientist Leland Allbaugh published “Crete: A Case Study of an Underdeveloped Area.” The landmark analysis of the eating patterns of an isolated Greek population strongly suggested that a calorie-limited diet high in fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and olive oil and low in animal protein, particularly red meat, could lower the risk of heart attacks and strokes, decrease chronic disease and extend life.

Medical research over the last half-century has largely borne out this initial finding. Weight-loss fads and eating trends come and go, but the so-called Mediterranean diet has stood fast. “Among all diets,” Dr. Walter Willett of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health concluded in an email, “the traditional Mediterranean diet is most strongly supported for delivering long term health and wellbeing.”

Of course, even the Mediterranean diet can sound like just another trend — especially in our current political moment, when so many are dismissive of anything with a European flavor to it. Recent news doesn’t help, either: This past month a study on the diet, originally published in 2013 in The New England Journal of Medicine, was retracted, revised and republished because of errors in randomization. Some took this as evidence that the diet itself was suspect. But in fact the study, once revised, showed a similarly significant composite reduction in risk for heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular death.


Here is a link to the article. Frequently the readers comments are as interesting as the article itself

/www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/opinion/mediterranean-diet-nutrition-weight-loss.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

Agreed. The consensus appears to be that, for us here especially, a "plant - based diet" and lots of daily exercise is an extremely important part of our due diligence in dealing with our condition.

Current research also indicates that sugar is more of a health problem than fat in many instances.

There was a good bit about that original look at the "Crete" diet, as well as much of the other "science" that led us into low fat and vegetable oils, in this book:
/smile.amazon.com/Big-Fat-Surprise-Butter-Healthy/dp/1451624425/ref=smi_www_rco2_go_smi_1405964225?_encoding=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0&ie=UTF8#customerReviews

Tim G said...
BB--It is interesting to read a contrarian POV. I think that most people, most of time would do well following a plan of nutrition that (1) they can follow for a long, long time (2) results in better blood numbers (like your step-daughter) (3) is supported with well-designed and repeatable scientific studies and (4) promotes sustainable resources.

I agree. And I suspect the Med diet is better than most. For one thing, the versions I read about don't seem to be low fat, and not all that high net carb, maybe not high at all. With the general guide lines and variety for what to eat, it could even be a bit hi fat, low net carb. ( i.e., lots of vegies rather than lts of bread/pasta would be sort of low carb). So I'm not surprised it is better than most. Heck, maybe it is better than all the rest for the long haul. Especially if a person does not already have a bunch of weight or diabetes/high insulin, pre diabetes, high BP, high triglycerides, etc, stuff that needs to be improved like yesterday. I suspect there might be better diets for getting that done quickly, but who knows. It is also quite possible that someone eating that way(med) for a lifetime would never develop most of those problems. But, I don't really know. t was interesting to read in that book how the med diet came to be promoted, by many of the same folks, and in the same manner, that gave us low fat/high carb/ vegy oil. (EDIT: when I say vegy oil, I need to add "except for olive oil or coconut oil", and maybe 1 or 2 others. Although, there are still some potential problems when cooking with even the olive oil)

Obviously, there are widely varied opinions on the subject. I think more opinions than actual science.

Post Edited (BillyBob@388) : 7/22/2018 6:29:10 AM (GMT-6)

Tim G said...
BB--

To apply Tolstoy's famous quote about marriages-- “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”-- to diets: All good diets diets are alike; each bad diet is bad in its own way.

My opinion is that exercise is an X factor that, combined with diet, leads to the best results. Although all four factors listed in my previous post I consider important, the critical one is the lab numbers. If the values for blood sugar, lipids and a other diet-related lab tests are good, the diet that got you those numbers is a good one.

tend to agree. If the #s are good, and the waist line is good, it probably is bottom line good. Except maybe for taste, which may or may not be good.