Key points about any diet.

During a few weeks, the Mediterranean Diet Team has been interviewing diet followers in many countries. The main conclusions we have reached are the following ones:

1) There is not any temporary diet that can solve the obesity problem.

2) There is not any unbalanced diet that can solve this condition. All of them have to be temporary, or you would die.

3) All temporary diets have a rebound effect. After completing them, lost weight is regained extremely fast.

4) There is not any successful diet that are not the result of a sound conviction

5) There is not any effective and permanent diet that are not associated to healthy habits.

6) There is not any successful diet that is not associated to exercise and activity.

7) There is not any healthy diet that is not based in lots of fruit and vegetables.

8 ) There is not a really healthy diet that is not based in natural products.

9) There is not an effective diet than keeps sodas and artificial drinks.

10) There is not a healthy diet that contains more than two or three portions a week of meat products.

Globalization and food industry has eliminated from all nations what there used to be healthy regional diets. Mediterranean Diet is not a popular culture any more.

Nowadays, if you want to follow what fifty years ago was the commonly practiced diet by the Mediterranean people, and later recognized as the best diet in the World, you have to be permanently alert about what you eat and especially about what you buy. Mediterranean Diet is not a diet for poor people any more. But its advantages are that you will spend all the invested money only in food, not in food gurus that bring fad diet to you with the only purpose to enrich themselves.

Economic crisis is not going to help. The cheapest products generally are the most industrialized ones. But they that usually are not the healthiest ones. Natural food items (they do not have to be ecological) are more expensive than the manufactured ones. Nevertheless, they are not so expensive as many miracle pharmacy products that promise you to improve your figure (What about your health?). Obesity is not an esthetic problem only. It is the mother of all diseases.

Mediterranean Diet is a gift from the past.

Many people are lately asking whether Mediterranean Diet is the nutrition pattern of the majority of the Mediterranean people. Or more specifically if it is what Spanish, Italian or Greek people eat nowadays.

The answer is absolutely not. The proof is the dramatic increase of obesity among them.

The nutrition habits and lifestyle model have been changed in those countries by many factors. Some of them are their higher income economy, the foreign influence, the fast food, and a much more sedentary life, among others.

We could say that Mediterranean Diet is frozen in time. It is the diet that the average Mediterranean and normally poor people followed until approximately 1950, more or less.

The restrictions about meat were imposed by the scarcity. Bread and olive oil was in many places the main source of calories, as there were not many other things. Saturated fat was not banned, but olive oil was cheaper and easier to get. Fish was abundant, especially near to the coast. Vegetables and legumes were consumed daily. Whole bread was the only one in the market. There was not refined flour or “integral bread” (made out of refined flour and bran, without the wheat germen). At that time bran was given to the chickens, as people did not need to eat more fiber and in some way the popular though about it was not very favorable. Lately, it was discovered that it may cause decalcification to some old or not properly fed people.

Nowadays, Mediterranean Diet has to be carefully followed. Otherwise, you are out of the lifestyle. Natural products are not banned in the Diet. Nevertheless, followers have to be wise enough to balance the intake of the amount and the variety of food, according to their needs and health conditions. Artificial stuff, specially manufactured products containing trans fats has to be avoided at any cost. They are the origin of most diseases and the not well understood obesity.

Mediterranean Diet has to be rescued from the past.

You can influence your children positive or negatively.

Anything a respected adult does in front of children become an example for them. Either at home, in the supermarket, cooking or eating, adults are sending permanent behaviour messages to children. Consequently it is extremely important that parents and trainers teach children acting better than talking.

If a person advice a youngster not to smoke, and at the same time this person is smoking in front of him, the advice is useless.

If you watch families at the supermarket, and all or most of them are obese, try to watch the cart. Very frequently, you will see it full of manufactured products, and with a significant absence of fresh products, vegetables and fruit.

Later, victims and many doctors will blame the genetic factors of these disorders. Disorders that have their origin in inadequate nutrition habits, most of them created and fostered from childhood.

A few days ago I saw a grandmother looking after her grandson. They were at the supermarket Iand I could see how she was buying a dozen of those chocolates eggs wrapped in aluminum paper, those that hide a small toy inside them. I noticed it as she asked permission to an attendant to give one of these eggs to the baby, an eight or nine month’s old child, who apparently was anxious to eat one. This child was already addicted to those harmful pieces of stuff even before being one year old!

I asked the lady if the parents’ child were aware of this practice, and when she refused to answer, telling me “that it was not my business”, I told her I could report this behavior to the social authorities, and that she could be prosecuted for it. Anyway, the solution for these problems starts with adequate adult information. Nevertheless, health authorities are considering punishing extreme cases of malnutrition. Fattening a child is no better than keeping them in a permanent state of hunger.

Use smaller plates at home

Fifty years ago, Dr. Francisco Grande Covián, one of the Spanish researchers that worked with Dr. Ancel Keys on the Mediterranean Diet, started using one of his simplest but most valuable motto: “You can eat everything but in a dessert plate”.

Years ago, this expression should have been changed. There have appeared many products that are sold as food and should be avoided at all. Nevertheless and considering this fact, the phrase continue being valid.

The Mediterranean Diet recommends a varied nutrition. It is the simplest way to get all the nutrients we need in a natural way. The modern Mediterranean Diet goes further and bans any unnatural and industrially processed products. As Michael Pollan says, only is food what your grandmother would have considered food.

But Mediterranean Diet also recommends eating small portions. The amount you should eat depends on the calories expenses you have had. Mediterranean Diet followers learn how to interpret the signals that the body sends to them. It is a matter of routine and years.

Cornell University is promoting The Small Plate Movement, an initiative that advice switching from a traditional 12 inches plate to a smaller 10 inches one. It would deal to a reduction of food intake and calories. This is a measure that has been proved that works. The Small Plate Movement tends to operate in two fields. One of them is the family environment. The second one but more difficult is in Restaurants. About this point, marketing specialists have contradictory opinions about this issue. It could be seen by customers as a simple reduction of operating costs, and it could damage the image and the competitiveness of the establishment. A solution to this could be offering smaller portions at a reduced price.

Nevertheless, the small plate movement is being implemented and for different reasons at the hotel and cruises buffets. Considering that customers can repeat as many times as they wish, it does not represent any problem. But it is not the best way to lose weight.

January 7, 2012

In the Mediterranean Diet you can find delicious meals.

Mediterranean Diet Groups can be the answer to preserve this Lifestyle from disappearing. Latest report reveals that Spain has reached the highest rate of child obesity in European Union and almost equals USA level. Apart from Governmental actions as controlling food publicity, regulating school meals, banning some types of products, most of them related to trans fats, some further actions must be taken by the population. Nevertheless, the first measure is to involve citizens in new lifestyle patterns and educate them. And to make clear to parents that their way of life is going to be followed by their children.

When you go to the supermarket and see the trolleys of some families, you can easily understand why all the members of those families are condemned to be obese. If you look at the people who push the trolleys, we will confirm this fact. Generally, all of them are overweight.

It has been observed that joining a proper group can be the best therapy to learn how to change your unhealthy habits.

Your environment is extremely relevant to develop healthy habits. If your family context is not positive, you should try changing it. It is a difficult task that needs time and patience. It is clear that joining an appropriate group can be the best therapy to learn how to change your unhealthy habits.

Mediterranean Groups can be the solution.

Yesterday, one of these Mediterranean Diet Groups met to enjoy a Mediterranean meal. It was not a typical menu of salad, vegetables, grilled meat of fish. It was a “puchero”. It is a very ancient and traditional Mediterranean meal. To make it, you cook together different types of meats as veal, pork, chicken, fresh bacon, “chorizo” (a type of Spanish sausage), “morcilla” (black pudding) and some vegetables and legumes as cabbage, celery and chickpeas. Before of that they enjoyed a superb “jamón iberico” (Iberian ham).

None of them is overweight. But none of them has these types of food daily. The secret is to balance the food intake and to do frequent exercise.

Is any of them overweight?.