what are the pros and cons of a Mediterranean diet?

If you're talking about the real mediterranean diet, the one studied by Ancel Keys almost 70 years ago, there are no cons, just pros which can be summarized in just one word: health. Unfortunately most people don't know what the real mediterranean diet used to be, and many believe it consists in lots of white pasta, white bread, pizza, gallons of olive oil and other nonsense. Such a diet wouldn't be healthy at all. First of all you must consider that back in the 1940s and early '50s those mediterranean peoples were poor. Not miserable, but poor, and this means that everything they ate was in moderate quantity. Processed food was practically non existant and refrigerators were only a dream, so all the food they ate was fresh and whole. Olive oil was very expensive and therefore sparingly used. Meat was the food of the rich and most people could afford it once a week if they were lucky, and on festivities. They ate legumes on a daily basis, pasta and bread in their whole, unrefined form, and of course vegetables and fruit. Those who lived by the sea ate fish too, but the general population did not because lack of refrigerators made it available to limited areas only.

Milk and cheese consumption was limited both for their price and technological limitations (again,refrigerators). Sugar? A rarity.

Basically it was a low-fat, whole-food, plant-based diet with a minimal addition of animal products. That was the Mediterranean diet. Sadly, most mediterranean peoples have abandoned it because their societies evolved and became industrialized, so nowadays most of them eat the typical western food which is making us fat and sick.

The original mediterranean diet is very similar to the Okinawa diet. It's a japanese group of islands where most people are extremely fit and healthy and live a very long life, remaining active until their last days. It's not genetics because unfortunately the younger generations have embraced the western diet and their health is rapidly declining.

Mediterranean Diet Pros And Cons

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