The Mediterranean Diet
Vegetables, fresh and delicious grains, fish, beans prepared with olive oil, and a number of various herbs, cheese, nuts, and some of the bread. Those are the key elements of the traditional diet, based largely on plants for peoples of the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. It is not only delicious food, but it seems to protect against heart disease, and a lot of chronic conditions. The diet of the Mediterranean Sea is not the traditional system of food only of its kind useful for health. However, it was subjected to study for a longer period than any other; it is also practical for the majority of Americans. It corresponds well with the latest on nutrition perceptions. The experts stress the need to rely on a comprehensive plan for food. Mediterranean countries have diverse cultures, peoples and individuals dealing with food itself. The Mediterranean cuisine relies on legumes – plants that provide us with peas, lentils, and beans. It is an excellent source of protein low-fat, vitamins, minerals, and fiber, which compensate for the meat. Use spices, Mediterranean diet benefit from the ideal climate for the growth of herbs and spices, which provide taste, and add nutrients, and compensate for the salt. Also has some medical benefits, for example, the mint helps indigestion.
Yet the pattern of Mediterranean Diet has been identified in the fifties of the last century, within an influential study is the Seven Countries Study under the supervision of Ansell Keys, a researcher at the University of Minnesota, has been spent more than a decade in the study of life style, especially the impact of diet, and its relationship to heart disease and blood vessels, with about 13 thousand men in Finland, and southern Italy, the islands of Corfu, Crete, Greece, Japan, and Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, the United States. Keys was interested, in particular, high-fat food, and was one of the first researchers who uncovered the existence of «good» and «bad» fat, and pointed out that despite the limited medical care, and sometimes at the same time, increased intake of fat, participants in the study of the Italians and Greeks, lived for a longer life, and recorded with the lowest rates of heart disease. The fat that has been dealt with in Italy and Greece, in general, was unsaturated fats, and derived mainly from olive oil or fish. The highest rates of heart disease have been detected in countries where individuals deal with saturated fats such as Finland and United States. «Study of Seven» has provided to the world, the diet of the Mediterranean Sea, which was modeled along the lines of the prevailing model for lunch on the island of Crete in the fifties and sixties of the last century. However, the term «the diet of the Mediterranean», adopted in one form or another in 1993, during the conference organized by the School of Public Health at Harvard University with a non-profit organization that promotes the education and means of nutrition and food systems of traditional civilizations.
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