Mediterranean Diet Proven Key In Avoiding Heart Disease And Stroke

The Mediterranean diet, which consists of fresh vegetables, fruits, fish, legumes, nuts and olive oil, has shown to reduce the health risks of cardiovascular disease and stroke.

A five-year dietary experiment carried out in Spain consisted of three groups — two that followed a variation of a Mediterranean diet and another that followed (or attempted to follow) a low-fat diet. The two former groups were encouraged to eat the foods aforementioned frequently throughout the week, to limit red meat and baked sweets and to have seven glasses of wine with meals per week. The latter group, while also encouraged to eat lean fish, were told to eat pasta and bread, and to stay away from olive oil and nuts.

All of the participants were at higher-than-normal cardiovascular risk — half had Type 2 diabetes, and roughly 80 suffered from hypertension. Throughout the five years of the study, 8 in the Mediterranean diet groups suffered from a heart attack, stroke or cardiovascular death, according to the findings published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Comparatively, a total of 11 on the control diet suffered such an event. These results indicate about a 30% reduction in “events” for those following the Mediterranean diet.

“Really impressive,” Rachel Johnson, a professor of nutrition at the University of Vermont and a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association told The New York Times. “And the really important thing — the coolest thing — is that they used very meaningful endpoints. They did not look at risk factors like cholesterol or hypertension or weight. They looked at heart attacks and strokes and death. At the end of the day, that is what really matters.”

Despite the low-fat dieters clocking in a daily calorie consumption of roughly 1,960 to the Mediterranean dieters' 2,200, it proved less beneficial to the participants’ health. However, it is also important to note that there was no reported weight loss associated with the Mediterranean diet, and a majority of the participants were taking statins or blood pressure or diabetes drugs in an ancillary effort to reduce their heart disease risk. “As a doctor it is easier to say take a pill,” Dr. Ramon Estruch, who conducted the study, told the Boston Globe. “But diet is a very powerful effect in protecting against cardiovascular disease.”

The study conducted in Spain, if transferred to the United States, is likely to show even greater results, as a typical Western diet is generally worse than that of those sampled, according to Dr. Miguel Angel Martinez-Gonzalez. “The differences probably would be huge.”

—Chelsea Regan

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