Today we are going to talk about Mediterranean Breakfast. Long time ago it used to be a bowl of “coffee” (normally roast barley, as coffee was very rare and expensive), goat milk, non degermed flour traditional bread, olive oil and sometimes a salty sardine or a salty herring and maybe a tomato. This was the normal breakfast of a peasant who had to go to work from sunrise to sunset. More accommodated people used to send the maid to buy “churros” or had whiter bread and better olive oil. Logically, they had real coffee and the same goat milk. Nevertheless, the milk was not as good as the peasant one, as normally the shepherd, who milked the goats in customers’ own homes, used to bring the bucket with some water in it. He has previously asked permission in the preceding house to “wash” the recipient in the sink. Only expert housekeepers or housewives knew the trick.

Churros

The traditional bread was made with non degermed flour, from which they used to take away part of the bran, that has been proved later to be a dietary cause of osteoporosis. This is why bread made with “degermed whole wheat flour”, that is really degermed and refined flour with added bran (fake whole bread), should be rejected. Generally, almost 99% of the “whole bread” is faked. Nowadays, the germ normally is removed as in a short period of time it makes the flour turns rancid.

This picture of the bread was taken from the Cecipereza’s and her brother Salva’s blog, one of the persons who know more about bread in the World, apart from being an excellent humorist. The bread is really artisan, as it was made without yeast. It is not an unleavened bread, as you can see, as she uses a little of the dough of the previous days, as they used to do in ancient times. It is a homemade bread.

The name of her blog has nothing to do with a trade mark or brand. It comes from a personal anecdote who led to a pun impossible to translate into English (it has to be pronounced in Andalusian). You should try to read it from the same Cecipereza’s about page.

Artisan bread

Anyway, let’s come back to the XXI Century. Even today, breakfast continues being a not very important meal. Many people just have a coffee or a tea and go to work. Nevertheless, many of them have another breakfast two or three hours later.

I would advise you not to depend on any food establishment (you never know what they are giving to you). So, I would recommend that you’d have a big breakfast at home. I would choose tea, skimmed milk and no sugar (or any sweetener) in it. This is something that will take time to you. However, after you have accustomed your taste buds to unsweetened drinks, you’ll reject any overly sweet or even sweet drink. And you will get your reward in the form of a better health, as in the case of avoiding overly salty food. Artificial sweeteners are potentially dangerous. There is a long report of Dr. David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD, in the Journal of the American Medical Association about it. “Artificially Sweetened Beverages, Cause for Concern”.

Wheat kernel

I would add to the breakfast a big amount of fruits (I’ll tell you later which are better), traditional bread, olive oil, dairy products and some fish, ham or even eggs. You can have, two or three times a week, an omelet with a yolk and two or three egg whites. Give the other yolks to your dog. You can also boil a dozen of eggs, keep them in the fridge and eat sometimes one or two whites.

With such a breakfast, you will be satisfied until lunch time. If the lunch is late, you can have one or two apples in the middle of the morning. Apples are clean, healthy and can be easily eaten without spoiling your shirt. Eating an apple half an hour before lunch has additional advantages: It prepares your stomach and will calm your hunger. (It’s a trick). Another one is taking strawberries before a cocktail party. You will not attack the canapés and your breath will be lovely.

And, at the lunch time, do what I said in “Weight Loss Tip 4: Start with a big salad” or boiled vegetables. (In the future “BS or BV”).

For dinner, what you eat will depend on the exercise you do, on the calories you burn. However, if you are very hungry go again for the BS or BV and something else. If you want dessert, take fruit.

Don’t forget, every time you are hungry in the middle of the main meals, go for a piece or two of fresh fruit.

]]> https://www.mediterraneandiet.com/2011/05/18/weight-loss-tip-5-mediterranean-breakfast/feed/ 0 https://www.mediterraneandiet.com/2008/11/15/who-invented-the-mediterranean-diet/ Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:25:35 +0000 http://www.mediterraneandiet.com/?p=320 … Continue reading →]]> Updated on March 14, 2017


March 14, 2017
Who invented the Mediterranean Diet? Nobody did
Posted by Alberto Roycor Updated on March 14, 2017

Through the keyword analysis I have been collecting the most frequent questions and doubts about Mediterranean Diet.  I’ll try to clarify the most commonly detected. The Mediterranean Diet Loss Weight Plan is now in the previous post. You can find it at the right column or go to Mediterranean Diet Loss Weight Plan. Later, I’ll put the plan in a permanent page so that it can be viewed easily.

Mediterranean Diet FAQ’s

1) Who invented the Mediterranean Diet?

Nobody did. It has been existing for thousands of years in spite of that nobody in the Mediterranean Basin knew t its name and how important it was for Humanity. Everybody knows that the World is divided in three types of Food Civilizations. The Corn, the Rice and the Wheat Civilizations. The Mediterranean Diet is inserted clearly in the last one. The Corn was domesticated in Mesoamerica. Consequently, it was not known until XV Century.  Rice was consumed more in East countries and in Sub-Saharan Africa. Nowadays, three grain are eaten all over the World. The Spanish more known dish, Paella, is made out of rice.

We have to clarify that until less than a century, in the Mediterranean Region was not possible to have refined wheat flour. The bread was made with ground wheat after separating most of the coarse bran. We had the flour with the wheat germ and a small percentage of that bran. Today, what you get as “integral bread” is 99,99 % made out of a mixture of refined flour and bran, with no wheat germ at all.  Some medical tests have proved some relation between bran and osteoporosis, as Bran decreases the gastro-intestinal absorption of calcium.

Concerning the simple sugars, The Mediterranean Diet had honey (organic honey*) as its mainly sweetener. Everybody knows the properties of this natural food. Mediterranean sweets were made out of it (and most of them still are in genuine Mediterranean homes). Its consumption did not produce obesity, due to the low percentage of these products in the Mediterranean Diet and the intense and/or continue physical activity of the people.

The potato was introduced to Europe in the middle of the XVI Century by European mariners. So it didn’t belong to the original Mediterranean Diet. Later, it was added to the daily diet without any problem, as its source of starch was needed to provide a clean energy to the working body, as all carbohydrates do.

Bread, either leavened or unleavened,  can be traced to prehistoric times. The discovery of leavened bread could probably be due to an accident.  Yeast spores mixed with the dough and produced fermentation. Until 19th Century,  all leavened bread used to have a sour taste, not coming from the yeast, but from the lactic acid excreted by a lactobacillus that lives in symbiosis which the yeast. This lactic acid protected the bread from spoiling as most microorganism cannot survive in an acid environment. Today, the lactobacillus has been removed except for the “sour bread“. Nowadays, you have unleavened bread in Mediterranean Diet. An example is the “Feast of Unleavened Bread in Israel”, a millenarian tradition.

Sourdough bread (original Mediterranean Diet leavened bread) is made without commercial yeast. It was the way that leavened bread was done for thousands and thousands of years before you could buy a packet of yeast. You have to make  an “starter” , in which the wild yeast will grow with the lactobacillus and then mix a part of this fermented started with flour, water and salt, to produce bread after a few hours of fermentation. It is not easy to make the started from scratch but you can try mixing whole grain flour with natural pineapple juice , and add every day more juice and more flour. At the fourth day you mix it (or a part of it) with the same volume of water and the same volume of flour (1/3+1/3+1/3). At the fifth day, you repeat the process until you see bubbles and smell yeast. As it is a natural process you may have to try it several times, as it happened at the beginning of the times. Better, buy the starter if you are in a hurry.

Anyway there is something that made the Mediterranean Diet unique and a World Heritage: The olive tree ((Olea europaea). A native species of the Mediterranean Region.

*According to USDA regulations, labelled organic honey cannot  contents even traces of not allowed chemicals, drugs or any type of antibiotics.

地中海飲食

This means Mediterranean Diet in Chinese

Recent News: The Euromediterranean Diet

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