Studies have found out that people who live in Mediterranean part of the world have longer average lifespan than rest of the world. The blend of Mediterraneanian Diet is one of the reasons, find out how in the article below...

 

Data from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) trial now tells us what is it in the Mediterranean diet that makes people sticking to it live longer. The EPIC researchers say that most important components of the Mediterranean diet that have a favorable impact on longevity are:

 

• Moderate amount of wine
• Less amount of meat
• High amount of vegetables, fruits and nuts
• And yes, Olive oil!

 

The researchers examined data from nearly 23 000 adult Greek individuals participating in the EPIC study. The participants filled a diet questionnaire based on which they were given a Mediterranean diet score. The score was based on nine components of the Mediterranean diet: Ethanol intake, meat and meat products, fish and seafood, monounsaturated-to-saturated lipid ratio, vegetables, legumes, fruit and nuts, dairy products, and cereals.

 

High consumption of beneficial food, low consumption of a meat or dairy products, and moderate consumption of alcohol were each assigned a value of 1. The researchers compared longevity for individuals with scores above or below the median, where the median was about five servings of vegetables and three to four servings of fruits and nuts a day. Moderate intake of alcohol was defined as one to five small glasses of wine for men and half that for women.

 

The mean follow-up period in the study was 8.5 years at the end of which a higher mortality was seen in participants with low Mediterranean-diet scores compared to those with higher scores.

 

An important point that the researchers made was that no single food was driving the mortality reduction, which once again underlines the need for modifications in our overall eating pattern rather than including or excluding any one food.

  

The study is published online June 24, 2009 in BMJ.