Traditional Mediterranean diet

The graphic illustration given below represents a healthy, traditional Mediterranean diet. It is build according to the dietary traditions of southern Italy, Crete and much of the rest of Greece in the period about 1960, based on current nutrition investigations. The selection of exactly these regions and exactly this period is based on the following considerations:

- The fact that the rate of chronic diseases for these populations at that time was the lowest in the world and adult average life was almost the highest, in spite of that fact that medical services were really poor;

- Presence of food consumption patterns’ descriptions at that time;

- The conformity of the dietary models received using above given data and contemporary openings of optimal nutrition based on epidemiological researches and clinical tests all over the world.

Sorts of such diet have traditionally subsisted also in other parts of Italy, France, parts of Spain and Portugal, parts of Turkey, parts of North Africa, another parts of the Balkan region, and parts of the Middle East. The point is that these areas in the Mediterranean region have olive oil cultivation to which the diet is closely connected.

On the basis of the obtained geographical and time parameters the sentence “Traditional Mediterranean diet” is used here as a term for the healthy traditional diets of these regions at that particular time.