Mediterranean Diet Food Pyramid

Mediterranean Diet Food Pyramid

How to Lose Weight With The Greek Mediterranean Diet

1. Subdivide your daily food intake into 4-5 sitting. This division helps you digest foods more efficiently and better utilize the main nutrients present in your food.

2. Eat proper amounts of pasta. This is a product capable of acting as the main ingredient of meals.

3. Accompany foods with bread. Try to choose multi-grain bread or traditional Italian bread or rolls and avoid as much as you can speciality breads, that are often prepared with the addition of oil or butter.

4. Include “all-in-one-meals” like pasta with vegetables or legumes in your daily routines. They are typical of Italian cuisine and provide you with the same nutrients as a three-course meal while being also lower in calories.

5. Use olive oil as your preferred fat. It's an extremely digestible fat capable of assisting in the digestion of other fats. Recent studies also suggest that olive oil is the key to the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet, due to its content of phenols, a family of weak acidic that repress genes which cause inflammation, so decreasing the risk of heart disease and arthritis.

6. Eat alternative meats such as chicken, rabbit, pork, turkey. They carry similar nutritional values to red meats, but are less fatty by nature.

7. Eat plenty of fish, with special attention to blue fish like sardines and anchovies. They have elevated nutritional value and low fat composition.

8. Limit the use of salt, replacing it with traditional Mediterranean herbs and spices to increase the flavor of foods.

9. Eat plenty of vegetables and fruits, which guarantee the proper consumption of fiber, minerals and vitamins (especially carotene, vitamin C, Vitamin B6 and folate).

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Chitika

SpiderMetrix

Sunday 21 February 2016

Mediterranean Diet with EVOO Reduces Cognitive Decline in Older Age!!






By Jedha Dening




The Mediterranean diet (MedDiet) has long been considered one of the world’s healthiest dietary patterns, so researchers Knight, Bryan, and Murphy set out to review the evidence surrounding the MedDiet, along with the contemporary Western diet, and their associations with age-related cognitive decline. They also sought to determine if it could be a feasible intervention strategy to recommend the MedDiet to those currently consuming a Western dietary pattern.

Obesity is associated with a 70-100% increased risk of dementia. It is fairly well established that the Western diet is a major contributor to the growing rates of obesity. The authors suggest that “it is now becoming evident that the clinical problems related to obesity are translating to effects on brain physiology and function.” There is also a consensus that particular nutrients such as saturated, trans fats and refined sugars contribute to age-related cognitive function and neurodegenerative disease via biological mechanisms including inflammation, oxidative stress, and insulin resistance.

As far as an association between the MedDiet and cognitive decline, several longitudinal, three cross-sectional, and two randomized trials assessed in the review did show a general consensus that adhering to a MedDiet improves mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s and dementia. However, due to the nature of the majority of the longitudinal studies being performed in the same cohort of participants, the authors suggest that these results may not be applicable to the wider population.

The two randomized control trials, the only two in this area to date, have shown that consuming a MedDiet with extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) does, in fact, improve cognitive function.

The first trial published in the Journal of Neurology, Neuroscience & Psychiatry, 2013, selected 552 participants with cardiovascular disease to conduct a 5 year trial with a mean follow-up of 6.5 years. Participants were randomized to a low-fat diet or a MedDiet supplemented with EVOO or mixed nuts. The MedDiet group had significantly higher global cognitive scores compared to the low-fat group.

The second trial, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, 2015, selected 447 participants with high cardiovascular risk who were randomly allocated to either a MedDiet supplemented with EVOO; MedDiet supplemented with mixed nuts; or a control low-fat diet. Participants were required to undergo a series of cognitive tests 4.1 years after the intervention. Overall the MedDiet+EVOO scored significantly higher for two of the tests compared to both groups. The MedDiet+EVOO group and MedDiet+mixed nuts saw significant respective changes from baseline in memory, frontal (attention and executive functions), and global function compared to the control group.

Though there are likely many synergistic effects of the MedDiet in its influence on improved cognitive function, researchers claim that the inclusion of olive oil, particularly because of it’s high levels of caffeic acid and tyrosol, reduces markers of inflammation in the central nervous system and has the ability to suppress neuroinflammation in the brain.

Overall the research does suggest that a MedDiet is the best strategy to recommend to people who want to decrease their rate of cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s, dementia, or mild cognitive impairment. Still, while this may be the case, researchers do suggest that due to socio-cultural values, norms, food availability, cost, palatability, and food access, getting people to change their dietary patterns can often be difficult to achieve. They suggest that a more “Westernized” MedDiet intervention could be a more feasible long-term approach worth exploring in future research.


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