Mediterranean Diet the World's Healthiest Cuisine

Mediterranean Diet has been called the world's healthiest cuisine. A delicious alternative for lifelong health. Healthy home cooking.

It is the rage among cookbook authors, trendy chefs, gourmets and food groupies, health-conscious consumers and even some members of the medical profession.

''It'' is the Mediterranean diet, which is catching on here slowly but surely. The diet dates to the late 1950s, when scientists examined the health, eating habits and lifestyles of residents of the Greek island of Crete. Primarily farmers, the Cretans had rates of heart disease and various types of cancer that were among the lowest in the world - despite the facts that approximately 40 percent of their daily calories came from fat and they drank four times as much wine as Americans do today.

And although medical services were limited, the island inhabitants' life expectancies were among the highest in the world.

Researchers have continued to examine the Cretan diet, similar to what was eaten in much of Greece and southern Italy 40 years ago and followed with variations in parts of Spain and Portugal, southern France, and other parts of Italy, North Africa (particularly Morocco and Tunisia), Turkey, the Balkan region and in the Middle East, especially Lebanon and Syria.

A detailed breakdown of the Mediterranean diet has evolved, culminating in "The Traditional Healthy Mediterranean Diet Pyramid." The plan was unveiled earlier this summer by the World Health Organization, the Harvard School of Public Health and Oldways Preservation & Exchange Trust, a food think tank based in Boston.

The pyramid, patterned after the educational graphic for Americans released 2 1/2 years ago by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is the first in a series. The three sponsoring organizations say the plan will "illustrate graphically the healthful traditional food and dietary patterns of various cultures and regions of the world."

(Differences between the new pyramids and the U.S. version, the sponsors note, are considered "refinements," although they are "preliminary and subject to modification.")


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