Mediterranean Diet - Summary & Chart

The Mediterranean Diet (MD)

A quick summary:

For further details of research, diet ingredients and health benefits, see our leaflets:

• How to follow the Mediterranean Diet
• Health Benefits of the Mediterranean Diet

Adopting the Mediterranean Diet - general principles

Changes to make when converting from a Western to a Mediterranean Diet:

• Maximize your intake of vegetables, legumes, fruits and whole grain cereals.
• Limit your red meat intake - fish and poultry are healthy substitutes.
• Where possible, use mono-unsaturated olive oil or rapeseed oil in place of animal fat such as butter or lard.
• Limit your intake of highly processed 'fast foods' and 'ready meals', where you cannot tell saturated fat and salt intake.
• Eat no more than moderate amounts of dairy products, and preferably low fat ones.
• Do not add salt to your food at the table - there is already plenty there.
• Snack on fruit, dried fruit and unsalted nuts rather than cakes, crisps and biscuits.
• Drink (red) wine during meals, but no more than three small glasses per day if you are a man and no more than two small glasses per day if you are a woman.
• Water is the best "non alcoholic beverage" (as opposed to sugary drinks). Although health benefits have also been claimed for various teas and coffee.

The conversion can be made gradually, but it's a good idea to set yourself targets.

Food quantities to aim for

Scientific research has shown the closer individuals can follow an 'ideal' Mediterranean Diet, the greater the health advantage.

If you'd like to try the full Mediterranean Diet at home, we've created the following handy tick-chart of foods to be consumed on a weekly basis, when following a scientifically tested 'ideal' Mediterranean Diet (as used by the author).

• Vegetables: a cup of raw leafy vegetables or half a cup of other vegetables.
• Potatoes: 100g.
• Legumes: one cup (100g) of cooked dry beans.
• Nuts: 30g. Eat as a snack or sprinkle on food for added taste.
• Fruit: one apple, banana, one orange, 200g of melon or watermelon, 30g of grapes.
• Meat: 60g of cooked lean meat or fish.
• Grains: half a cup (50-60g) of cooked pasta or rice; one slice of bread (25g).
• Dairy:one cup of milk or yoghurt; 30g of cheese.
• Eggs: 1 egg.
• Wine: 125ml glass of average strength red wine.

It is the author's experience, that using the tick-chart for several weeks helps educate the eyes and palate in what to buy and cook, as well as what to avoid on restaurant menus and TV cookery programmes. So, over time, the healthy Mediterranean Diet can become a natural part of your way of life and, indeed, part of you. It's probably the closest science can currently get to a 'user guide' for fuelling the human machine.

(And let us know how you got on by following the 'Please add your experience' link below - If you have any favourite Mediterranean style recipes, please pass them round.)