A few more, from another "private" blog I write..
1) Cleaning Up The Olive Oil Spill
Jeff Novick, MS, RDN
Because of the popularity of Mediterranean style diets, olive oil went from being a high calorie, high fat condiment, to a health food and in some circles, a super food.
This is unfortunate, as the true benefits of the Mediterranean style diets was not because of any one specific food, let alone olive oil, but because of a highly active lifestyle and a prudent diet that occurred in the region during the late 1950's and early 1960's. Their dietary pattern at the time was based on a high intake of fruits, vegetables, starchy vegetables, whole grains and legumes, a moderate intake of fish, and where meat and dairy were little more than condiments. While olive oil was used in certain part of the Mediterranean, it was not a staple for many, let alone used by all.
In 2003, when the Mediterranean diet was becoming popular, Dr. Alice Lichtenstein, one of the nation’s top nutrition scientists who is the senior scientist and director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at Tufts University, cautioned Americans:
"If the main message that Americans get is to just increase their olive or canola oil consumption that’s unfortunate because they will increase their caloric intake and they are already getting too many calories. What they need to do is eat more fruits, vegetables, and legumes and fewer foods rich In saturated fats”
Unfortunately, this caution has not been heeded and since 1998, the average intake per person of olive and other salad oils has more than doubled. While I know we would all like to believe olive oil is the key to the benefit of the Mediterranean diet, let's take a minute to take a closer look at olive oil, and put it in perspective.
Olive oil, like all oils, is the most calorie dense food there is. One tablespoon is 120 calories. Like any dietary oil, it is 100% pure fat and has no fiber, protein, or minerals and has virtually no vitamins except for a small amount of vitamins E and K.
In regard to the types of fat, olive oil is 14% saturated fat, which makes it ineligible to meet the industry standard to be considered a food low in saturated fat. (Remember, the goal is to keep our intake of saturated fat to less than 7% of total calories). Two tablespoons of olive oil actually have 3x the amount of saturated fat as a 3.5 oz serving of lean chicken.
In regard to the essential fat omega 3's, a 1 tablespoon serving of olive oil has .1 gram, which would be considered a poor source by industry standards. In addition, it has an omega 6/3 ratio of 11/1 which is almost 2x the upper limit of the recommended ratio.
To get enough omega 3's from olive oil, one would need to consume 8 oz, which would also be 1900 calories and 42 grams of saturated fat.
2) The Mythological Mediterranean Diet
Jeff Novick, MS, RDN
The "mythological" Mediterranean diet does not even exist in the Mediterranean anymore and hasn't in several decades. The reason is, they adapted our "Western" sedentary lifestyle and diet and as a result, their rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease are rising rapidly.
A study published just yesterday confirms this.
The study looked at over 2,000 adults in Spain, aged 18 to 80 with equal amounts of males and females. Over 60 per cent of the subjects were overweight or obese and 77 per cent did not meet the minimum recommendations for exercise. Around 33 per cent had high blood pressure, 65 per cent had high cholesterol levels and about 30 per cent had three or more cardiovascular risk factors that could be modified by changes to their lifestyle or diet.
In regard to the study, Dr Ricardo Gómez-Huelgas from the Internal Medicine Department at Hospital Carlos Haya, Malaga said, "The prevalence of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol in Spain have all risen at an alarming rate over the last 20 years and this is likely to cause future increases in bad health and death due to cardiovascular disease.”
Dr Anthony Wierzbicki, a London-based Consultant in Metabolic Medicine said, "The myth that the Mediterranean diet and lifestyle is so healthy is based on 40-year old data from rural areas and so much has changed during those four decades."
In addition, in 2009, in an article on dietary fat that was published in the Journal of Clinical Lipidology, Dr Virgil Brown, MD, who is the Editor–in–Chief of The Journal of Clinical Lipidology, and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Internal Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine said in regard to the way the Mediterranean diet and olive oil have been promoted in the USA,
"I’m afraid that this has become a great hoax applied to the American diet and that we have not paid as much attention to the data as we should have in order to make a better decision about the content of fat in our diet."
We need to move beyond the cultural myths of the Mediterranean diet and the misguided marketing and advertising of olive oil as a health food, to a truly healthy lifestyle and eating pattern that is simple, easy and based on sound science.
3) What Mediterannean Diet?
Jeff Novick, MS, RDN
My recent discussions and blogs on Olive Oil and the Mediterranean diet, have sparked some interesting conversations.
A recent article in the NY Times confirms many of the points I make.
The article is called, "Does the Mediterranean Diet Even Exist?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magaz ... .html?_r=0Some of the key points the article makes are:
- In Europe and the United States, the so-called Mediterranean diet — rich in olive oil, whole grains, fish, fruits and vegetables and wine — is a multibillion-dollar global brand, encompassing everything from hummus to package trips to Italy, where “enogastronomic tourism” rakes in as much as five billion euros a year.
- According to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Mediterranean people have some of the worst diets in Europe, and the Greeks are the fattest: about 75 percent of the Greek population is overweight.
- Before there was a Mediterranean diet, there was WWII and the food shortages that went along with it. When the fighting was over, Haqvin Mamrol, a researcher in Sweden, showed that mortality from coronary disease declined in Northern European countries during the war. This was, he believed, the result of wartime restrictions on milk, butter, eggs and meat
- At about the same time, a Minnesota scientist named Ancel Keys, who had been studying the effects of starvation on a group of volunteer subjects, moved on to study the diets of Midwestern businessmen. He found that these well-fed Americans were more prone to heart disease than were men in war-deprived Northern Europe
- “There is no such thing called the Mediterranean diet; there are Mediterranean diets,” says Rami Zurayk, an agriculture professor at the American University in Beirut. “They share some commonalities — there is a lot of fruits and vegetables, there is a lot of fresh produce in them, they are eaten in small dishes, there is less meat in them. These are common characteristics, but there are many different Mediterranean diets.”
- The healthy versions of these diets do have one other thing in common: they are what the Italians called “cucina povera,” the “food of the poor.” In Ancel Keys’s day, Mediterraneans ate lentils instead of meat because they had no choice. “A lot of it is to do with poverty, not geography,” says Sami Zubaida, a leading scholar on food and culture.
- The diet that Keys and his colleagues invented bore little resemblance to what Mediterraneans actually wanted to eat.
- Today, more than half the populations of Italy, Portugal and Spain are overweight. In Eastern Mediterranean countries like Lebanon, obesity is growing.
Don't be fooled by the marketing and advertising that is being fostered upon us by the food industry. The real MED diet existed at a time of post war recovery and was a diet of poverty, limited resources and food restriction.
Olive oil was at best a condiment as was meat, dairy and butter. Fish was consumed in moderation and they consumed large amounts of fruits, veggies, starchy veggies, whole grains and legumes that they prepared fresh. They were also highly active and engaged in hard physical labor.
This diet does not exist anywhere in the world today, including anywhere in the Mediterranean.
So, for your best health, put down the olive oil and skip the hype about the Mediterannean diet. Instead, follow the time honored and proven principles of healthy living and eating.
In Health
Jeff
PS, Here is a fairly decent analysis of the traditonal MED diet of Greece, Crete and Italy
The Mediterranean Diet Secret: Olive Oil or Low Fat Plant-Based 200 Days A Year?
http://donmatesz.blogspot.com/2012/12/t ... l.html?m=1
by vgpedlr » Tue Oct 13, 2015 11:31 am 
