"If we want to popularize the Mediterranean diet again and promote its health and environmental benefits, we must stop viewing it as an idealized diet regimen frozen in time back in the 60s. To encourage citizens to follow this diet again, we need to take a comprehensive approach that considers its foods as well as traditions and customs.”
Scientific research supports this view, specifically two studies conducted by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
"Instead of only recommending the products that people ate in the past - quotes the prestigious site News Medical Life Sciences - we should start by looking at the food that people eat now and how they consume it. Our lifestyles have changed and we don't eat as much as we did 50 years ago. Not only because our work schedules are different: we have less time to cook and we eat more in front of screens, but also because the products, their cooking times and the utensils and appliances we use are different. For this reason, awareness-raising campaigns that seek to promote dietary standards incompatible with modern society, are bound to fail.”
The Mediterranean diet is not merely a list of foods that shall be consumed, it is also a lifestyle that can be adopted all over the world, from Europe to Japan.
Indeed, European olive oil is at the core of a healthy diet. Scientists agree that olive oil is a prime ingredient of a healthy, energetic and long life.
A new comprehensive ‘vision’ of the Mediterranean diet is now recognized as a patrimony of Humanity.
"According to studies conducted by the Foodlab research group of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the UOC," writes the News Medical Life Sciences further, "we need to consider the Mediterranean diet as a series of cultural aspects that shape the way we eat, not just as a mere diet. Both Professor Medina and her team at the UOC stressed that habits such as eating in company, sharing food and using local products are equally important for our health and our environment, and their benefits include regulating our appetite and choosing healthier meals."
According to the researcher, "the Mediterranean diet must be considered as a whole in order to preserve its benefits and adapt them to different countries," Japan is for instance among the top three countries to import olive oil, the prime ingredient of this diet.
"When we talk about sustainability, for example, we mean much more than the environment," Medina explained.
"We need to incorporate the social and cultural dimensions (of the Mediterranean diet, ed.) to ensure that the right habits are adopted along the entire food chain: from how crops are produced to what we end up buying at the market or supermarket."
The role that lifestyle plays on personal health is clear, for scholars: “to fight diseases, it is necessary to adopt a more global approach. In the study on obesity, researchers insist we stop considering health problems as a result of consuming too many calories, but also as a result of lifestyles.”
"Obesity includes many other aspects such as purchasing power, social class, stress, type of work and work hours, sedentary lifestyle, sleep patterns, and psychological factors such as the image you project to others and yourself."
"Over time, we have come to understand that the Mediterranean diet, in addition to a healthy eating model, is a cultural model - as recognized by UNESCO in 2013. This model involves a certain way of eating: in company around a table instead of watching TV or looking at smartphones and with foods that, while very tasty, contain very few processed products”, such as European olive oil.
For the scientific site News Medical Life Sciences, there is no doubt or time to waste: "Now we have taken another step forward by realizing the impact that food has on our sustainability and the environment, the Mediterranean diet can help both aspects".
07 October 2021
