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Quotes about Mediterranean Diet from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"Oceans of ink have been spilled attempting to tease out and analyze the components of the mediterranean diet, hoping to identify the X factor responsible for its healthfulness: Is it the olive oil?The fish?The wild greens?The garlic?The nuts?The French paradox too has been variously attributed to the salutary effects of red wine, olive oil, and even foie gras (liver is high in B vitamins and iron)." - Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Get the book.)

"Foods that are a part of the mediterranean diet, like fish, olive oil, and nuts, increase "good" HDL cholesterol and reduce "bad" LDL cholesterol. These foods are high in omega-3 fatty acids [like docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA)] and low in omega-6 fatty acids. Omega-3s are better at increasing good cholesterol and lowering bad cholesterol than are omega-6s." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

"Wine may not be the X factor in the French or mediterranean diet, but it does seem to be an integral part of those dietary patterns. There is now abundant scientific evidence for the health benefits of alcohol to go with a few centuries of traditional belief and anecdotal evidence. Mindful of the social and health effects of alcoholism, public health authorities are loath to recommend drinking, but the fact is that people who drink moderately and regularly live longer and suffer considerably less heart disease than teetotalers." - Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Get the book.)

"Colleagues at the Emory University School of Medicine, Department of Cardiology, also recommend the mediterranean diet Pyramid. That kind of healthy (and delicious) diet combined with a little bit of time in the sun (about ten to fifteen minutes a day), and you will get all the vitamins and minerals you need. So spend your vitamin money on something else, like a vacation. Rest and relaxation will do more for you than a bottle of letters." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

"Whether it is the TLC diet, the Step 1 or Step 2 diet, the mediterranean diet, or the Ornish diet, they all offer a great step toward reducing the risk of heart disease. One might be more suited to you over the other. Consider reading more about each, experimenting, or speaking with your health-care practitioner and/or a qualified nutritionist to determine which approach is best for you. Nutritional Supplements Although dietary changes alone can have a powerful effect in reducing the incidence of heart disease, they may not be enough for everyone." - Tori Hudson, N.D., Women's Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine: Alternative Therapies and Integrative Medicine for Total Health and Wellness (Get the book.) "Consider the DASH diet or Mediterranean diet: increase intake of fruits; vegetables; whole grains; legumes, especially soybean products; nuts; seeds; olive oil; and fish. • Consider avoiding all sodium; at the least, reduce sodium to less than 2,500 mg per day. • Quit smoking. • Do not exceed one alcoholic beverage (5 oz) per day. • Practice regular aerobic exercise (30 minutes or more, 5-7 times per week)—e.g., a brisk walk. • Reduce or eliminate coffee (both caffeinated and decaffeinated). • Strive for ideal body weight." - Tori Hudson, N.D., Women's Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine: Alternative Therapies and Integrative Medicine for Total Health and Wellness (Get the book.) "Consider the Mediterranean diet: increase intake of fruits; vegetables; whole grains; legumes, especially soybean products; nuts; seeds; olive oil; and fish. • Reduce sodium to less than 2,500 mg per day. • Quit smoking. • Do not exceed one alcoholic beverage (5 oz) per day. • Practice regular aerobic exercise (30 minutes or more, 5-7 times per week)—e.g., a brisk walk. • Reduce or eliminate coffee (both caffeinated and decaffeinated). • Strive for healthy body weight. • Practice stress management such as meditation or relaxation exercise 15 minutes each day." - Tori Hudson, N.D., Women's Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine: Alternative Therapies and Integrative Medicine for Total Health and Wellness (Get the book.) "Compared with a low-fat diet, three months on a mediterranean diet that included olive oil (one liter per week) or packets of walnuts, hazelnuts, and almonds decreased cardiovascular risk factors.157 Both of these diets were associated with significant reductions in blood pressure, lower fasting glucose levels, lower insulin levels in those without diabetes, lower triglycerides, increased HDL-C, and lower C-reactive protein levels. Ornish Lifestyle Modification Program. The low-fat diet has been promoted by Dr. Dean Ornish since the publication of his bestselling book Dr." - Tori Hudson, N.D., Women's Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine: Alternative Therapies and Integrative Medicine for Total Health and Wellness (Get the book.)

"Yes, you devotees of the mediterranean diet, that includes olive oil, as I'll explain in Chapter 10.) • Generally, you cannot eat nuts or avocados. You can eat a wonderful variety of delicious, nutrient-dense foods: • All vegetables except avocado. Leafy green vegetables, root vegetables, veggies that are red, green, purple, orange, and yellow and everything in between. • All legumes—beans, peas, and lentils of all varieties. • All whole grains and products, such as bread and pasta, that are made from them—as long as they do not contain added fats. • All fruits. It works." - Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D., Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease (Get the book.) "JTL v- Jl jL jL Heart Healthv" Oils^ During the 1990s, the headlines were suddenly filled with the wonders of "the mediterranean diet." It was widely hailed as a much more heart-healthy approach to eating than the average American diet, largely on the basis of research by a group of French scientists headed by Dr. Michel de Lorgeril of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble.1 Known as the Lyon Diet Heart Study, the research spawned scores of magazine and newspaper articles and Mediterranean-style cookbooks." - Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D., Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease (Get the book.) "It is not surprising that they received such great attention and that the mediterranean diet attracted many adherents. And it is also not surprising that many of my patients are at first puzzled by the fact that my nutrition plan does not permit monounsaturated oils such as olive oil or canola oil to be part of an arrest and reversal program for coronary artery disease. Because of the Lyon Diet Heart Study, the media have taken to referring to these oils as "heart healthy." Well, nothing could be further from the truth. They are not heart healthy." - Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D., Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease (Get the book.)

"The famous Lyon Diet Heart Study showed that just following a mediterranean diet (including fish, vegetables, and olive oil), produced a 72 percent decrease in coronary events, a 56 percent decrease in overall mortality, and a 61.7 percent decrease in cancer. Not a drug in the world can get those results. And in the famous ongoing Nurses' Health Study, doing only five simple things was associated with an almost unbelievable 83 percent reduction in the incidence of cardiovascular disease. You ready for the five simple things?" - Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why (Get the book.)

"Olive oil is the chief source of fat in the traditional mediterranean diet. This term has a specific meaning. It reflects food patterns typical of some Mediterranean regions in the early 1960s, such as Crete, parts of the rest of Greece, and southern Italy. The traditional mediterranean diet has shown tremendous benefit in fighting heart disease and cancer, as well as diabetes. It has the following characteristics: þOlive oil is the principal source of fat. þIt focuses on an abundance of plant food (fruit, vegetables, breads, pasta, potatoes, beans, nuts, and seeds)." - Michael T. Murray, Beat Diabetes Naturally: The Best Foods, Herbs, Supplements, and Lifestyle Strategies to Optimize Your Diabetes Care (Get the book.)

"But the quest to pin down the X factor in the diets of healthy populations (PubMed, a scholarly index to scientific articles on medicine, lists 257 entries under "French Paradox" and another 828 under "Mediterranean Diet") goes on, because reductionist science is understandably curious and nutritionism demands it. If the secret ingredient could be identified, then processed foods could be reengineered to contain more of it, and we could go on eating much as before." - Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Get the book.)

"The notions that eating fish ?or a mediterranean diet, or green vegetables, or less meat, or more carbohydrate, or less saturated fats, or whatever promises the fountain of youth ?easily gain credibility. To test the inference with a randomized controlled trial seeking differential effects on clinically important outcomes in a well population is prohibitive. It's daunting to test a pharmaceutical where you can administer pills that contain either the active agents or a placebo. Can you imagine controlling the diets of half the sample for decades, waiting to see how many die?" - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.)

"The observational study of survival benefit of adhering to the mediterranean diet in Greece is by Trichopoulou and colleagues, "Adherence to a Mediterranean Diet" (2003). CHAPTER THREE: YOU AND YOUR COLON The Minnesota Colon Cancer Control Study was published in 1993 (Mandel and colleagues, "Reducing Mortality from Colorectal Cancer by Screening for Fecal Occult Blood," 1993), after the cohort had been followed for thirteen years." - Nortin M. Hadler, The Last Well Person: How to Stay Well Despite the Health-Care System (Get the book.)

"For year, the mediterranean diet has toted benefits for cardiovascular health. It uses mainly olive oil and fish in this diet. Olive oil, like other plant-based fats have a heating point at which the oil tends to oxidize. Butter, lard and coconut oil are said to be saturated fats but they can be heated to a high temperature for cooking without turning into a trans-fat. However, many of us are averse to cooking with lard, butter or tallow. If you choose to cook with a vegetable-based oil, saute food at a lower temperature to prevent oxidation." - Heather Caruso, Your Drug-Free Guide to Digestive Health (Get the book.)

"The pitfall of the unmeasured confounder may explain the tiny survival benefit observed for those among 22,000 Greek adults who adhered more tightly to a "Mediterranean diet" over the course of forty-four months of observation. Multiple confounders were taken into account, but not ses. This is not to say there's no biological effect from adding olive oil and nuts to your diet, even a low-fat diet. Your lipid profile will look better, more pleasing to those who define risks and hazards. But the reduction in hazard is very small. Don't feel remiss if you don't like nuts or olives." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.)

"Consistent with these findings, the patients in the Lyon Diet Heart Study who developed less heart disease on a mediterranean diet (high in vegetables and fruits, whole grains, and vegetable oil, and low in red meat) also developed 61 percent fewer new cancers compared with the people who ate the "prudent Western-style heart diet" (meaning lower in total and saturated fats than the normal diet)." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.) "Not only did the Lyon Diet Heart Study show that the mediterranean diet was much more effective at reducing the risk of recurrent heart disease than the statins, but the decrease in risk came without lowering cholesterol levels. Giving the Lyon Diet Heart Study its due would have called into question the NCEP's very mission of bringing LDL cholesterol to the public's attention as the single most important culprit in heart disease." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.) "Interestingly, in this study the mediterranean diet had no significant effect on total or LDL cholesterol, showing that cholesterol is not the only culprit that increases the risk of heart disease. In fact, results from the Nurses Health Study, published in 2000 in the NEJM, show that women who exercise regularly, eat a healthy diet, don't smoke, maintain a proper body weight, and drink moderately have only 17 percent as much risk of developing heart disease as women who don't follow these guidelines." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

"Although not an extremely low-fat diet, consisting of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, seafood and olive oil with limited meat and dairy (mostly cheese), the mediterranean diet offers a high intake of neutral or beneficial fats found in olive and walnut oils. Low breast cancer rates of Greek and southern Italian women may be attributed to the protective effects of these beneficial omega-3s." - Freedom Press, Natural Cancer Cures: The Definitive Guide to Using Dietary Supplements to Fight and Prevent Cancer (Get the book.)

"The observational study of survival benefit of adhering to the mediterranean diet in Greece was by Trichopoulou et al. (2003). The experimental short-term randomized controlled trial of adding olive oil and nuts to a low-fat diet demonstrated a change in lipid profile that suggested a reduction in risk (Estruch et al. 2006). Examples of observational cohort studies that demonstrate an inverse relationship between leisure-time physical activity and all-cause and cardiac mortality are the studies by Lakka et al. (1994) and Anderson et al. (2000)." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.)

"The Pan-Asian mediterranean diet emphasizes fish for its lean, healthy protein and anti-inflammatory oils. Just by eating the equivalent of a fatty fish meal once a week, according to research at the University of Washington, you ingest enough good fatty acids to reduce your risk by half of developing an initial heart attack compared to individuals who have no dietary intake of EPA and DHA. The right kind of fish (see our recommendations and caveats at the end of the chapter) are rich in EPA and DHA. Lean organic or free-range chicken breasts are okay as well." - Stephen Sinatra, M.D. and James C., M.D. Roberts, Reverse Heart Disease Now: Stop Deadly Cardiovascular Plaque Before It's Too Late (Get the book.) "We call it the Pan-Asian mediterranean diet, or PAM for short, and recommend it to patients. This type of diet is compatible with most of the principles underlying another popular diet plan that you probably have heard of: the Zone diet. Both are at odds with earlier diets that pushed high carbohydrates instead of highly processed and fatty foods. The PAM diet further recommends that even fewer of your calories come from lean protein and instead that more come from the healthy fats found in Asian and Mediterranean foods." - Stephen Sinatra, M.D. and James C., M.D. Roberts, Reverse Heart Disease Now: Stop Deadly Cardiovascular Plaque Before It's Too Late (Get the book.)

"The Mediterranean Diet: Fact Versus Fiction The observation that certain Southern European countries experience lower than average rates of heart disease has created considerable interest in the so-called 'Mediterranean Diet'. Being the product of Italian parentage, my curiosity was naturally aroused by the growing publicity awarded to this concept, and I read with interest the descriptions of an allegedly typical Southern European diet." - Anthony Colpo, The Great Cholesterol Con: Why Everything You've been Told About Cholesterol, Diet and Heart Disease is Wrong (Get the book.) "They have also shown that low saturated fat intakes do not in any way explain the lower incidence of cardiovascular disease in Japan and the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean Diet: Fact Versus Fiction The observation that certain Southern European countries experience lower than average rates of heart disease has created considerable interest in the so-called 'Mediterranean Diet'. Being the product of Italian parentage, my curiosity was naturally aroused by the growing publicity awarded to this concept, and I read with interest the descriptions of an allegedly typical Southern European diet." - Anthony Colpo, The Great Cholesterol Con: Why Everything You've been Told About Cholesterol, Diet and Heart Disease is Wrong (Get the book.)

"As a sample of the evidence to date, eating soy, chicken, olive oil or using a low-calorie or mediterranean diet are all associated with a lower risk of cancer. More than 30% of cancers are thought to be preventable with dietary means. A diet rich in a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables, whole grains and legumes is thought to offer the body many nutrients to help fight cancer development. What should you avoid? Alcohol, aspartame and barbecued meats are on the list of foods that may increase the risk of cancer. Want an easy rule of thumb?" - Allison Tannis, Probiotic Rescue: How You can use Probiotics to Fight Cholesterol, Cancer, Superbugs, Digestive Complaints and More (Get the book.)

"Given the amount of resources committed to educating people about lowering cholesterol compared with helping people eat a healthy diet, one might correctly surmise that drug companies have much more money to spend promoting the "scientific evidence" that supports lowering LDL cholesterol with statins than do the flaxseed, canola, olive, soybean, walnut, and vegetable farmers who would benefit from the widespread promotion of the mediterranean diet." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

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