The Mediterranean Diet | LIVESTRONG.COM

Healthy Food Choices for the Mediterranean Diet

Last Update: August 12, 2008

Video By: LIVESTRONG.COM

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.

Views: 4,160
Comments: 10
Transcript of this video

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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.

by gnomeygnome on June 17, 2008 at 6:33 PM

"Instead of meat, they consume mostly fish for their protein-"

Last time I checked, fish was meat.... ?

by Pyriel on July 2, 2008 at 6:59 AM

no not in the sense you think. there are vegetarians who only eat fish. i think it just depends on who you ask.

by palvarez26 on November 18, 2008 at 6:15 PM

She meant meat as in red meat.

by rozgarden on January 10, 2009 at 9:20 AM

This is a very good diet. I lost 50lbs on it and maintained the weight loss for 2 years.

by Pescetarian on January 16, 2009 at 8:46 AM

Fish is a meat, but she means instead of red meat or poultry.

by allanaclare on January 16, 2009 at 11:28 AM

Fish is the flesh of a dead creature, and therefore meat. I do not underatand how anyone can claim to be a vegetarian and eat fish without raising serious doubts about both their intelleigence and their integrity. Perhaps someone can explain this for me.

by nfarkas on January 16, 2009 at 12:55 PM

a vegetarian who also eats sea-animals is really a Pescetarian.
vegetarians don't eat any animals by definition, but may eat their bi-products (such as dairy).
vegans don't eat any animals nor their bi-products.
If any of these groups (discounting vegans) also eat animal bi-products such as dairy or eggs, then they can add ovo (eggs) and lacto (dairy) to their dietary name (ie: ovo-lacto-pescetarian).
there's a simple definition breakdown.

by Darren1974 on January 17, 2009 at 2:57 AM

come on people, stop being pedantic over the "fish - is it meat" argument!!!

by phutch08 on January 17, 2009 at 12:26 PM

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/vegetarian-diet/HQ01596

by SassiDasWusel on January 18, 2009 at 12:30 AM

I really love this "diet", but I do not see it as a diet. This is a lifestyle, copied from mainly italia. Italia isn't only pizza and great ice cream.
Some meal I really like is pizza with tomatos and olives, without cheese and meat and all this stuff. Believe me, this is just great!

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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.