Mediterranean Diet Decreases Death Rate

Scott Kustes on 12 Dec 2007 12:22 pm

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I’m sure everyone saw this news release a few days ago titled Mediterranean diet cuts mortality rates, says study. Here comes the media darling again!

Eating plenty of fruit, vegetables and fish instead of meat, not to mention olive oil rather than saturated fats, is generally accepted to be good for you, but only a few studies have attempted to work out whether such a diet would help people to live longer. The study, published today in Archives of Internal Medicine, confirms that among nearly 400,000 retired Americans, the closer they stuck to a Mediterranean diet, the lower their likelihood of death over a five-year period.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like what was really measured, as is typical of comparisons to the Standard American Diet (SAD), was solely a reduction in saturated fat in favor of olive oil. That’s the story as the media reports it, but when you stand back and really examine it, the differences between the Mediterranean Diet (MD) and what the typical American eats are huge. The MD features loads of fruits and vegetables. The SAD doesn’t. The MD features whole foods, including grains and legumes, and little in the way of processed junk full of trans fats and sugar. The SAD features lots of processed junk full of trans fats and sugar and little in the way of whole foods. Notice any differences? I may not be a big fan of grains and legumes, but it doesn’t take Einstein to figure out that consuming a diet of food, rather than junk, will improve health.

So let’s jump into this a bit deeper. The NHS took a look at this study also. As they point out, we’re dealing with a food questionnaire study, which are notoriously inaccurate. It was also not truly a comparison of the MD and a SAD or any other diet. It was a measure of how closely they adhered to the MD, which is to say that those that weren’t adhering closely may have been including steak, Twinkies, Pop-Tarts, or eggs. We don’t know what they are really comparing it to. But that works out well for putting out a story. Maybe the headline should really be “The Mediterranean Diet: It’s Better Than…Well, Nobody Really Knows Because We Didn’t Control It.”

All of this makes me wonder what an evolutionarily-correct Paleolithic diet does for mortality. Recall that a Paleo-style diet beat a Mediterranean diet when given to people with diabetes. But a Paleo diet includes “all of that meat and fat” and will probably not be featured in the mainstream media for quite some time.

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Tags: beef, grain, legumes, meat, Mediterranean Diet, olive oil, Paleo, red meat, seafood, Sugar and Fake Foods, trans fat

6 Responses to “Mediterranean Diet Decreases Death Rate”

medbook on 15 Dec 2007 at 8:47 am #

I don’t think we should “fight” to see what’s the best between the Mediterranean diet or the Paleo diet.

Are both healthy diets.

The thing that surprises me is the fact that people look for a diet only for weight loss without take care of over all health…their main goal is to appear to the others…health is secodary.

Health should be the main goal, weight loss is only a consequence of health

Scott Kustes on 15 Dec 2007 at 3:09 pm #

Right on about people really only caring about appearance rather than health. Get healthy and appearance takes care of itself.

As to “fighting” over what’s best…Both are healthful diets, but the real goal should be for people to understand what is optimal. The Mediterranean Diet is more healthful than what most Americans are eating. But the real goal of any nutritionist or health advocate should be to tell people what is BEST, not what is “good enough”. Give people the optimal to shoot for, knowing that if they fall short, they’ll still be pretty darn good. It’s that old “Shoot for the moon, if you miss you’re still amongst the stars” thing.

So given that, I do think there should be studies comparing the Mediterranean Diet versus the Paleo Diet (in some variation). I think that it is important that if health advocates and the media are going to trumpet the MD as best, it should have been compared to all denominators, not just the lowest common one. If MD wins out over Paleo in well-controlled studies, I’ll tell people to follow it. I have no dog in this fight and my main goal is to educate myself. Until MD proves itself as something other than “pretty darn good and certainly better than that crap most people eat,” I’ll continue to push a Paleo diet, void of grains and dairy as the optimal. Our genes virtually dictate such a diet.

The thing about the MD is that it’s politically correct. Olive oil is monounsaturated and that’s PC. Whole grains are PC. Red meat isn’t PC. Ditching grains isn’t PC. The MD wins the media race only by virtue of it’s PC-ness.

Cheers
Scott

medbook on 16 Dec 2007 at 7:27 am #

Read these posts I’ve wrote:
Here and Here

Scott Kustes on 16 Dec 2007 at 12:09 pm #

Thanks for the links medbook. If, as you point out, the studies show the Paleo Diet to be superior, why do you say “I don’t think one diet is better than another”? Have you ever tried dropping grains from your own diet to see how you feel?

Scott

medbook on 16 Dec 2007 at 3:00 pm #

ATTENTION:

I don’t say that the Paleo diet is best, I’ve only written what the study says.

I think the Mediterranean diet is a light paleo diet and that the only way that the paleo diet is better then Med diet is for people with Diabetes type 2.

My Diet and Weight Loss » Blog Archive » Mediterranean Diet Decreases Death Rate on 27 Dec 2007 at 7:17 am #

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