Diet and Health FAQ

Tagged As: mediterranean diet food pyramid

Question:
Polymeal Diet takes page from Okinawa Diet? December 17, 2004 A newly published paper in The British Medical Journal outlines the long term health benefits of the Polymeal: a proposed non-pharmaceutical alternative to a Polypill, a combination of drugs taken in one dose to cut heart disease, which was proposed in 2003. The Polymeal diet comprises fish, eaten four times a week; wine, amounting to 15 centilitres a day; dark chocolate (100g a day); fruit and vegetables (400g a day); garlic (2.7g a day) and almonds (68g a day). Using a computer model of the American adult population, the scientists that came up with the Polymeal calculated the risk of heart disease would fall by 76 per cent, women would live five years longer on average and the life expectancy for men would rise by 6.6 years compared to those who did not follow the diet. Their projections are based on previous research which identifies the success of specific foods in lowering blood pressure. We asked Dr. Bradley Willcox, co-author of the Okinawa Diet™, his opinion of this study. Dr. Willcox: This is a very interesting study that supports the powerful potential impact of diet on longevity. This is consistent with what we see in the Okinawa Diet, where Okinawans are at 82% lower risk for heart disease than Americans, live about 5 years longer on average and have four times as many people over the age of one hundred. On average, Okinawans eat fish (80 grams per day), drink alcohol in moderation (1-2 drinks per day), eat seven servings per day of fruit and vegetables (394 grams per day). While the Okinawans are not huge consumers of almonds or chocolate, they do enjoy garlic, soy foods (such as tofu, miso soup), jasmine tea, and healthy oils such as a canola/soy oil blend that is popular all over Japan. Add to that a variety of spices that jazz up any dish, such as turmeric and a variety of chilies and other peppers and you have a delicious way to eat yourself toward a healthy heart and long life. Nuchi gusui (food is medicine !). In Okinawa, it just happens to be tasty medicine!

Answer:
G'day G'day Nicky, Being invaded becomes a way of life. On Crete the national obsession with wild vegetables, horta appears to have arisen from the necessity of feeding themselves when invaders took their cultivated crops. Put simply, horta became associated with survival. The land is poor from a cultivation point of view and especially from a grazing point of view. The sea was over-fished and fish is scarce. For this reason their diet became semi-vegetarian. Interestingly, meat became associated with religious events. Horta became associated with preparatory fasting. Many times I have made comments along the line that success is often associated with a strong sense of being part of something greater than oneself. Crete is one reason for this belief. Tradition has become important. Apparently it persists today where they eat stuffed tomatoes only in the season when they would have them, themselves even though they are available the year round thanks to modern commerce. Mediterranean diets are a mixture of diets some good, some not so good. Italy for instance has a high rate of T2 diabetes. The rates are almost always higher in the cities than in the country. From time to time I have mentioned the diet of folks living on Crete and used made comments about them having had a diet and lifestyle that resulted in them having the lowest rates of coronary heart disease. Here is one from six years ago. The Mediterranean diet in general doesn't lower the death rate from all causes. It redistributes them. It is not until one gets to the Greek Islands such as Crete that one finds a lowering of the death rate from all causes. The essential difference between the Crete diet of the 1970s and the general Mediterranean diet are lower meat and fish consumption, twice the vegetable consumption, treble the fruit consumption. IMHO they got sufficient fish and meat without excesses. The greens used were wild greens collectively known as horta. These still contain many protective substances eg I3C, suphoraphane unintentionally bred out of domesticated strains. Here are some figures plucked as is where is from the net for nutrient levels in the Crete diet as it loses its distinctive character and becomes Modern Mediterranean. 1960 1999 Saturated Fat gm 25 45 Mono Fat gm 67 45 Trans Fat gm 0.8 2.7 Fiber gm 47 19 Cholesterol mg 123 419 Phytosterols mg 267 184 Potassium mg 4504 2748 Magnesium mg 483 295 Folate mcg 559 284 Vit A IU 20,404 2919 Vit E mg 17 12 Vit C mg 258 117 Different people will do what they will with those figures as suits their purpose. For me the 1960 figures look like a prescription for health. I'm sure someone could reverse engineer it using non Mediterranean foods.