The Mediterranean diet is a nutritional model inspired by the traditional dietary patterns of the countries of the Mediterranean basin, particularly Italy, Greece, and Spain.
These common patterns include a high consumption of fruit and vegetables, bread and other cereals, olive oil and fish. Also wine should be consumed, but in moderate quantities.
?Discovered? in 1945 by the U.S.A. doctor Ancel Keys, who disembarked in Salerno with the U.S. Army, the Mediterranean diet has gained common currency only in the 1990s. It is based on what from the point of view of conventional, mainstream nutrition is considered a paradox: that although the people living in Mediterranean countries tend to consume relatively high amounts of fat, they have far lower rates of cardiovascular disease than in countries like the United States, where similar levels of fat consumption are found.
One of the main explanations is thought to be the large amount of olive oil used in the Mediterranean diet -- in contrast to the high amount of animal fats in a typical American diet. Olive oil lowers cholesterol levels in the blood, while animal fats tend to increase cholesterol levels. In addition, the consumption of red wine is also thought to be a factor, because it contains bioflavonoids with powerful antioxidant properties (this effect of the red wine is also called the French paradox, due to France's high red wine consumption).
