The Mediterranean Diet is a worldwide reference model when it comes to eating oriented toward the prevention of diseases typical of food disorders, and Italy is the home of this model, which today is rarely applied because of modern lifestyles and the types of foods now available.
Although universally praised, its origins are based on a consideration that was true in the past and no longer applicable today, except in rare cases.
Few people know that the concept of "Mediterranean diet" was introduced by the American physiologist Ancel Keys, who with his observational study Seven Country Study determined that the Mediterranean diet, as practiced in southern Italy, was the best compared to other Western diets.
Because of these statements, in the 1970s a misunderstanding formed in the history of the science of nutrition and medicine, that is, considering fats as dangerous for the circulatory system and suggesting to replace them with carbohydrates.
Ancel Keys' studies have an obvious gap: they did not assess that in the populations studied there was prevalent strenuous physical activity (work in the fields) and food restriction (a period of severe economic crisis for a country like Italy that was recovering from the post-war period of the Second World War).
So, using the same model for a sedentary citizen, in an environment full of insulin-stimulating foods, has led to widespread and rampant obesity. Furthermore, the study in question did not provide a scientific evaluation of which food would have been more suitable, even for those populations, to live a healthier and longer life, but rather captured a reality of the past, which today would be quite unrealistic and therefore not applicable in dietary terms.
In today's state of things, with lifestyles upended and the nutritional quality of foods reduced, we absolutely have to ask ourselves whether to keep proposing this dietary model is correct, or whether the whole thing should be revised, especially based on the new scientific knowledge about food and its direct influences on metabolism.
We need to give importance to observational studies, invest in in vivo and in vitro research, and strengthen the evidence that demonstrates in practice how a food or nutrient can interact with cells, what kind of hormonal stimulation it induces, and so on.
The critical points of a carbohydrate-based diet like the Mediterranean diet model are:
- excessive glycemic index
- excessive glycemic load
- glycemic variability
- induced metabolic alterations.
Our studies and our research have revealed intimate balances between food, hormones and metabolism, and many variables that make each person's path unique.
We are convinced that our nutrition philosophy, in addition to being healthy and resolving the problem of excess weight, is also the root of a modern reformulation of the Mediterranean Diet. EasyNature is the Mediterranean Diet 3.0.
We are convinced of it and the results prove us right.
