As good as pills: Mediterranean diet prohibits nothing that was recognized as food by your great-grandmother

From NYTimes: The Times's Gina Kolata talks about a new study, published on The New England Journal of Medicine's Web site, focusing on the health benefits of a Mediterranean diet.



When Diet Meets Delicious - The Mediterranean Approach http://buff.ly/XCsvTJ -- Mediterranean diet prohibits nothing that was recognized as food by your great-grandmother.

Here is the original research from NEJM:

In a multicenter trial in Spain, 7447 participants who were at high cardiovascular risk, but with no cardiovascular disease at enrollment (age range, 55 to 80 years, 57% were women), were randomly assigned to one of three diets:

- a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil
- a Mediterranean diet supplemented with mixed nuts
- a control diet (advice to reduce dietary fat)

Participants received quarterly educational sessions and, and depending on group assignment, free provision of extra-virgin olive oil, mixed nuts, or small nonfood gifts.

The primary end point was the rate of major cardiovascular events (myocardial infarction, stroke, or death from cardiovascular causes). On the basis of the results of an interim analysis, the trial was stopped after a median follow-up of 4.8 years.

The two Mediterranean-diet groups had good adherence to the intervention. A primary end-point event occurred in 288 participants.

The multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios were 0.70 and 0.72 for the group assigned to a Mediterranean diet with extra-virgin olive oil (96 events) and the group assigned to a Mediterranean diet with nuts (83 events), respectively, versus the control group (109 events).

Among persons at high cardiovascular risk, a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or nuts reduced the incidence of major cardiovascular events (the study was funded by the Spanish government).

References:

Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease with a Mediterranean Diet. February 25, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1200303
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303

Comments from Twitter and Facebook:

Dr Kelly Sennholz @MtnMD: Better! RT .@DrVes: As good as pills: Mediterranean diet prohibits nothing recognized as food by ur grt-grandmother bit.ly/WuFQKv


Matthew Bowdish: My grandmother used to serve bacon-wrapped asparagus. Is that in the Mediterranean diet?