The Mediterranean Diet Video

The Mediterranean diet is based on foods and eating habits from the Mediterranean region. Try these tips for buying Mediterranean diet foods in this healthy shopping video.

Take Action

Based on Mediterranean lifestyle
Contains healthier fats
Low in animal fat
High in fiber
Fish replaces red meat

About this Author

Michelle Cooper has been a registered dietician for more than 10 years. She currently works for the state of North Carolina for the New Hanover County School District in the Child Nutrition Department as the supervising registered dietician on staff. She specializes in child nutrition, child fitness and overall child health. She enjoys her job because it allows her to be a pivotal piece of child development.

MICHELLE COOPER: Next, we're going to talk about the Mediterranean diet. The Mediterranean diet is just what it said. It took a clue from the countries of the Mediterranean and their style of eating which tends to be healthy. They tend to have lower incidences of cardiovascular disease than the countries in the western part of the world. What we found is this diet is high in fiber. It's high in fruits and vegetables. And although it tends to be a little high in fat, it's from the good fat like you see behind me, the Mediterranean olive oils. Olive oils are mostly monounsaturated, which we know now, lowers our bad LDL cholesterol while raising our good HDL cholesterol. The other thing that we noticed about the Mediterranean diet, that it's low in animal fat. In fact, there's hardly any red meat at all, and the meat that is involved in this diet is very lean. Instead of meat, they consume mostly fish for their protein. It's also high in fiber. So if you added a little bit of exercise component to this diet, it would be a diet that would be highly recommended by most dieticians. The four things you want to look at is number one, is it a reasonable style of eating that you can sustain for a long period of time? And yes, this diet has proven itself over the years of the countries of the Mediterranean. Two, does it exclude any food groups? This diet does not exclude but it restricts red meat which is actually a good thing, and it encourages more consumption of fish. Number three, is there an exercise component involved? That's the only part of the diet that does not really emphasizes the activity, but if you add that to the other three components, then this would be a healthy diet worth trying.

Healthy Food Choices for the Mediterranean Diet Video

Take Action

About this Author

Member Comments