What is the Mediterranean Diet? It’s a nutritional model that was patterned after the way people eat in countries such as Italy and Greece. People started paying attention to it after it became well publicized that people living in that part of the world have a much fewer occurrences of cancer and other diseases.

This way of eating has only recently been getting attention from Americans– starting in the late 1990s in fact– even though it was first developed in the 1940s by an American doctor; but at least it’s finally well-known. There are a fair amount of differences between the average American diet and the Mediterranean diet that are worth reviewing.

The US Food Pyramid is markedly different from the Mediterranean Diet food pyramid. First off, the Mediterranean Diet contains very little red meat. Although they use red meat in their meals, it’s in very small portions, and not often. And whereas the US Food Pyramid lumps all the different kinds of meat into one category, fish takes up a big portion in the Mediterranean Diet food pyramid.

Whole grain foods such as rice, bread, potatoes, couscous, and other things are what make up the main staple of Mediterranean dishes. Fruits and vegetables are also an important part of the Mediterranean diet, as are nuts and beans, and this is one thing that the two food pyramids have in common, although the quantities that are recommended are somewhat different.

The traditional US food pyramid groups all the forms of protein into one category, which makes it hard to see what specific role each type of food ought to play in your diet. The Mediterranean Diet food pyramid keeps them separate.

The reason why people have finally begun to pay attention to this Mediterranean way of thinking and eating is that they have been discovered to have shockingly low rates of cancer and other such diseases.

You’ll find plenty of red wine being used in the Mediterranean Diet. Red wine has really powerful antioxidants, and it is part of just about every meal. The same goes for olive oil, which is used in Mediterranean cooking and is also known to have some antioxidant properties. If you want to live a healthy life, check out the Mediterranean Diet food pyramid. It will help you not only look better, but you’ll feel better too.

Get a Mediterranean body! Visit Mediterranean Diet Recipes.net for all the Mediterranean Diet resources, recipes and diet advice you will ever need.

- Jessica P

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Food, Weight Loss. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.