Live Longer With The Mediterranean Diet

The Mediterranean diet isn’t a fad weight-loss diet. It’s what millions of people have been eating for thousands of years. It’s true that you can lose weight on this diet. You can also gain weight on it, if you, say, fling about the olive oil, binge on pasta, and finish up with a few pieces of baklava. But, on the average, people eating the Mediterranean diet live longer and live healthier than most others. I'm sure they live longer and healthier than those eating a fast-food American diet with lots of munchies. And people eating the Mediterranean diet are less likely to get Alzheimer’s.

Learn more about living longer with the Mediterranean diet from my TOUR THE SITES website. Scroll down its left margin to Diets, Nutrition. You’ll find there much information on healthy eating – including, of course, the Mediterranean diet.

Alzheimer’s And The Mediterranean Diet

In 2006 researchers reported on a study of 2,258 older adults in New York. They scored the food intake of the participants from 0-9, depending on how near they came to the Mediterranean diet. The higher the score, the nearer to the Mediterranean diet.

Compared with those with the lowest scores, those with middle scores were 15 percent less likely to have Alzheimer's disease, and those with the highest scores were 40 percent less likely to have Alzheimer's disease.

In 2008 researchers in Italy reported on pooled data from 12 international studies on the Mediterranean diet. They found that those who closely followed the Mediterranean diet were

– 9 percent less likely to die from heart disease or other cardiovascular problems;

– 6 percent less likely to develop cancer or die from it;

– 13 percent less likely to have Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease.

For Those Who Already Have Alzheimer’s

The Mediterranean diet helps here too. In 2007 researchers reported on a study that followed 192 people with Alzheimer’s disease in New York for an average of four and a half years. “Alzheimer's patients who adhered to the diet to a moderate degree lived an average 1.3 years longer than those people who least adhered to the diet. And those Alzheimer's patients who followed the diet very religiously lived an average four years longer,” said study author Nikos Scarmeas, of Columbia University Medical Center in New York.

What Exactly Is The Mediterranean Diet?

According to WEB MD: the Mediterranean diet includes high intake of certain foods:

– Fruits including apples, oranges, orange or grapefruit juice, peaches, apricots, plums, and bananas;

– Vegetables including tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, raw or cooked carrots, corn, yams, spinach, collard greens, and yellow squash;

– Legumes including peas, lima beans, lentils, and beans;

– Cereals including cold breakfast cereals, white or dark bread, rice, pasta, and potatoes (baked, broiled, or mashed);

– Olive oil and other oils with monounsaturated fatty acids.

The Mediterranean diet also includes moderate amounts of fish of all types, low intake of meat and poultry, low to moderate amounts of dairy products, and a moderate amount of alcohol (usually wine served at meals).


Some versions of the Mediterranean diet add moderate amounts of lean chicken in addition to the fish – an easier version for many to follow.