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What Was the True “Mediterranean Diet”?
Dear friends and readers, the true “Mediterranean Diet” dates back to the Greeks and the Romans, populations that shared the areas by the Mediterranean Sea. Surely, in those days, there was no physician on duty who recommended the proper food amounts each person needed to eat in order to maintain their ideal weight, or to optimize their health. People ate when they were hungry and, among the poorer echelons, whenever food was available. The cultivation of cereals existed back then too, but luckily for them, agriculture was not as intensive and the consumption of grains was limited to the period from July to December, (if there was a great harvest). For the rest of the year, people’s main meals were based on legumes and wild vegetables, and they ended with dry fruits/nuts. As for the dressing? Extra virgin olive oil.
Surely, breakfast did not consist of a cappuccino with a croissant on the side, nor did they drink warm milk with a tablespoon of sugar, and cookies! If those poor farmers had started their days with such a breakfast, they would not even have had the energy to lift the hoes onto their shoulders! Breakfast was usually at 9 in the morning, after having already put in 4 hours of work, and it was a savory breakfast based on legumes, eggs, and pieces of dry bread. As previously mentioned, because of the lack of flours, bread was not baked every day, but only on the weekend, and it was consumed in broken pieces as an accompaniment for legumes. If we take a look at the nutritional composition of legumes, we see that they contain three times the amount of proteins found in cereals while containing much fewer carbohydrates. Furthermore, they have a much different (and better) glycemic and insulin impacts compared to cereals.
The Romans and the Greeks were noted fishermen, and sheep-farming was very common as well, not to satiate milk-lovers but for the wool, a little bit of cheese, and meat (due to lack of pasteurization techniques, milk was not consumed all that often). The most widespread livestock species, then, were sheep and goats, not cattle; the latter were used as pack animals or for working in the fields.
As for fruit? Because of the lack of refrigeration, they could not preserve fruit all year. Fruit was consumed seasonally: apples and pears in September, persimmons in October and November. Then they waited for the warmer weather to start consuming apricots, strawberries, cherries, loquats, figs, etc. Certain fruits were dried so they could be eaten as sweets during festivities. I only wish that we would consume dried fruits as sweets today! Meanwhile, so-called “barbarians” actually ate only a few berries and nothing else. Nowadays, however, thanks to intensive cultivation, we eat fruit all year, in enormous quantities, including in the form of fruit juices. Fruit does not only mean fiber, vitamins and minerals, but also fructose, a sugar that is almost absent in green vegetables and that, when consumed in excess, becomes very dangerous for the liver, arteries and joints.
When it comes to the true “Mediterranean Diet,” the consumption of oily dry fruits (or nuts) during main meals as a second course or as a snack during working hours was very common, and they often substituted for bread or for other foods for long periods throughout the year.
The Discovery of America and the Death of the Mediterranean Diet
The year 1492 is a very important date, not only because of the discovery of this “new” land, but above all due to the ensuing consequences. The European colonists immediately understood the enormous potential to exploit this “new” territory: the flora and fauna were almost completely different compared to those of the Western world. The American food products we find on our tables today include:
● Borlotti and cannellini beans, which, because of their yield, went on to substitute cowpeas, which then started to gradually go extinct;
● Peanuts, which unfortunately partially substituted Mediterranean dry fruits/nuts;
● Corn, which is used as the main ingredient in polenta;
● Prickly pears;
● Pineapples and other types of fruit;
● Hot peppers, tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplants, and potatoes, which belong to the same plant family, the Solanaceae, (and we will see how they can cause serious problems for those who suffer from autoimmune diseases);
● Chocolate/cocoa, which was consumed in its bitter state by the American Indians. Yet the Spanish deemed it better to mix it with sugar, thus giving rise to the chocolate that conquered all the cafes in Europe. (And speaking of sugar, it was the very expanse of American soil which led to the great sugarcane plantations and then allowed the spread of the “sweet salt” in all of Europe.)
As you may have come to understand, when nutritional “experts” recommend a “healthy” dish of pasta with tomato sauce, deeming it the perfect “Mediterranean” dish, you get a pretty good idea of how “educated” they are. I certainly would not even let them write me up a Saturday cheat-night menu.
I hope that, at this point, a question has sprung forth in your mind: “But does the healthy Mediterranean Diet exist at all?” My answer is that it is called the Mediterranean Diet solely because when you are eating your pasta with tomato sauce you may be eating it in Italy; if you were on an island in the Atlantic if would be the Atlantic Diet. Joking aside, alas, the “Mediterranean Diet” no longer exists, but that does not mean we cannot honestly revive it again, making sure not to back the idea that in the “Mediterranean Diet,” one must eat a little bit of everything. Let’s just say that many experts love to be a little too egalitarian when it comes to food. I, on the other hand, love to improve people’s health, and if a particular food must be eliminated from a diet then it must be eliminated, period. Today, not even wheat is Mediterranean because of all the genetic selections that have taken place. Neither is milk, as its chemical composition totally changes because of pasteurization. Nor are many types of fruit, created by man through cross-breeding—genetic splices that would never occur in nature. What you eat every day is the fruit of human intelligence, which can think up of so much but seldom spares a thought to the unpleasant consequences that come with usurping Mother Nature’s place. Nature is very unforgiving.
Clinical Cases
● G.B., a 36-year-old female with fibromyalgia treated with morphine and antidepressants. After 20 days on the Italian Reset Diet, she solved her illness and discontinued the drug treatments.
● R.M., a 59-year-old female with hypertension, diabetes and migraines. After one month, she was able to control her blood sugar and blood pressure, and forgot about her migraines. After three months, she put aside all her medications, because all of her pathologies had disappeared. She lost 30 kg (approx. 66 lbs.) in five months.
● S.R., a 44-year-old male, lost 25 kg (approx. 55 lbs.) in three months and returned to his ideal weight.
● G.M., an 82-year-old male, successfully blocked his Parkinson’s tremors in one month. Today, he is able to walk and to eat without the fear of dropping the spoon from his hand. He has also resolved his insomnia issues. His tremors reappear only when he reintroduces wheat and dairy, which are severely forbidden, in his diet.
CHAPTER 2
THE HORRORS OF COMMON DIETETICS
Premise
Macro- and micronutrients are the components of all foods. Macronutrients are all the components that, among their functions, also provide energy: fats, carbohydrates and proteins. Micronutrients are all the components that do not provide energy, such as vitamins and mineral salts; rather, they enable all metabolic processes to take place within our bodies. Your food intake is heavily centered on the abuse of macronutrients, especially carbohydrates, but is very lacking in vitamins and minerals. This means that while your organic machine draws its daily energy from macronutrients, it cannot use them effectively because of the lack of micronutrients, which also serve as the body’s organic sweepers. And so toxins accumulate, causing weight gain at first and the onset of pathologies later on.
The Calorimetric Bomb and the Kilocalorie
The calorimetric bomb is an instrument used to determine the thermal power of a fuel. Its mechanism is simple: the container, a component of the calorimetric bomb, is filled with distilled water. Then a porcelain vessel, in which the substances to be analyzed are placed, is immersed therein. Pure oxygen is then injected into the container. The combustion is triggered by electrodes that enable the flow of energy toward the “fuel.” The generated heat will be absorbed by the distilled water and its temperature will rise, showing the reading on a thermometer. Through this equipment, scientists have had fun quantifying the caloric values of macronutrients, and therefore of all the foods we consume daily. I do not know about you—I may just be strange that way—but I have never seen a burner inside me! According to this concept, our bodies are regarded as a food-burning sack, not taking into consideration calories’ effect on our DNA and on our immune system. I will give you an example: if you took a kilogram of lead and a kilogram of feathers and threw them off the fifth floor, the lead would fall at a faster rate than the feathers because of air resistance, despite weighing the same amount. As far as food is concerned, these impact our bodies and our metabolism, which acts as our air resistance! Three hundred calories coming from legumes will be very different than three hundred calories coming from white flour, because the latter contains only energy without any minerals or vitamins. The ensuing impact on our bodies is catastrophic! The calorie concept is not totally wrong, but I think it is how it is applied that makes it totally useless if not potentially dangerous, because people convince themselves that they can eat their delicious crunchy snacks since they contain the same number of calories as a fresh piece of fruit. I have actually seen professionally-prescribed diets where these snacks, justified by their caloric value, were allowed as afternoon snacks. Can you imagine? It gives me the shivers! Happy people, totally unaware of the serious health impact of these foods, follow these diets and boast about eating this crap! This is why I have never written out an overly specific diet for my patients, instead opting for food regimens, and why I always worked on changing their lifestyles.
Fats Do Not Make You Fat
I believe that fats are one of the most important nutrients in people’s diets. In the classic diet, they are the macronutrients that provide the highest energy: 9 kcal/g. It is this characteristic of fats that has always made them the boogeyman of all diets:
“Watch out for fats or you’ll put on the pounds! Away with extra virgin olive oil! Nuts are forbidden! Eat chicken breast galore!” And people do lose weight like this, but with very unpleasant consequences, such as hair loss, loss of libido, the yo-yo effect, increased inflammation, and loss of skin tone. Do you get the message? The reason for the loss of skin tone in all these diets is the lack of fats, which are essential components of the cells in our bodies. Humans cannot do without fats. Primitive man primarily consumed dry fruits/nuts, oily seeds, fish, and the fatty parts of the animals they killed. Our metabolism is excellent at burning fats and cannot do without them.
Fats are, in fact, subdivided into essential and non-essential fats. The essential fats are linoleic acid, where all the omega-6 fats originate, and linolenic acid, from which all omega-3 fats come. Even though EPA and DHA are omega-3 fats that can be produced by linolenic acid, I feel that they should be directly introduced into our bodies primarily by means of seafood; in fact, when linolenic acid enters our bodies, it does not necessarily lead to the production of EPA and DHA, which are fundamental to our well-being. Because of this uncertainty, daily consumption of seafood is advised, if not mandatory. EPA and DHA have very important functions within our bodies:
● a strong anti-inflammatory function, producing the good ecosanoids that oppose the bad ecosanoids originating from arachidonic acid, the fatty acid of meat origin, but also derived from linoleic fatty acid, belonging to the family of omega-6 fats and consumed in disproportionate quantities in the Western world. Inflammation, especially silent inflammation, is the main cause of cancer and autoimmune diseases in the West;
● they enable the lowering of LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, thus protecting the cardiovascular system;
● DHA, in particular, is present in large quantities in breast milk, allowing the correct development of brain functions, increasing cognitive functions and visual acuity, and fighting free radicals in the brain;
● both are immunomodulators—that is, they regulate the immune system response and fight allergies originating from the immune system, the body’s army, which can often wield more “flamethrowers” (bad ecosanoids) than “hydrants” (good ecosanoids).
Another vital point I would like to dwell on for a moment is the cholesterol “boogeyman.” In recent years, an intense anti-cholesterol campaign has been launched, promoted by physicians who are a little too apprehensive towards patients. The recommended values for total cholesterol were, up to just a few years ago, below 240 mg/dl. Today we have maximum total cholesterol values of 200 with maximum LDL values of up to 140; there are even some geniuses who recommend decreasing this value to under 100, claiming a large part of the population should take statins to inhibit the production of cholesterol and prevent atherosclerosis!
But what function does cholesterol serve? Cholesterol is a very important lipid within our bodies. It is the essential component for the formation and stabilization of cell membranes. A lack thereof would lead to poor cell turnover. Cholesterol is a precursor to many hormones; in fact, a cholesterol deficiency could cause:
● decreased libido in humans (because testosterone could not be formed);
● suppression of the immune response due to the deficiency of vitamin D, (which is produced precisely by cholesterol), followed by depression;
● poor control of the immune system, as a cholesterol deficiency also causes a decrease in blood cortisol;
● a decrease in female estradiol with serious consequences, such as osteoporosis.
There is a fundamental concept to point out: the intake of food cholesterol does not negatively influence the cholesterol present in our arteries. In fact, it helps eliminate it. Our bodies are equipped with an internal control mechanism for the production of cholesterol. As soon as we take in cholesterol in the form of food, the liver itself no longer produces it, meaning that the amount taken in will never ever increase the amount already present in the blood. Had it not been so, the French, with all the cholesterol they ingest every day, would have died out from all the heart attacks. More than anything else, we need to understand why the body produces high amounts of cholesterol. Could it be inflammation, given how cholesterol is needed to restore cell membranes? Perhaps it is poor sex hormone formation, seeing as cholesterol is used for this as well? Is it a need for cortisol production, an anti-inflammatory molecule derived from cholesterol? But then how does atherosclerotic plaque form?
Recent studies have shown that the formation of atherosclerotic plaque is the final stage of a path that begins with the alteration of blood vessels due to the constant presence of high blood sugar levels. In other words, when the structure of a blood vessel is altered, cholesterol gets into the endothelial tissue of the vessel, with subsequent inflammation that entails the deposit of platelets and the formation of atherosclerotic plaque. Furthermore, recent studies cite that the infiltration of cholesterol into blood vessel tissue depends both on the size of the LDL cholesterol (known as bad cholesterol) and on the degree of oxidation of these small and oxidized LDL particles that penetrate the blood vessel. On the contrary, large and non-oxidized LDLs do not have this capability. As such, checking the LDL values in tests is pertinent, since only very few medical testing centers evaluate the oxidation and size of LDL particles. Another value to check is the ratio between HDL (known as good cholesterol) and total cholesterol. My total cholesterol could be above 200, but if the HDL ratio is lower than 4, I would not have much cause for concern, as I would consider myself pretty protected. I have seen patients with 220 total cholesterol, and 120 HDL cholesterol, who came to me frightened enough to start an anti-cholesterol diet because they were threatened by the imminent prescription of statins because their cholesterol was out of bounds! I can imagine the day will come when all of mankind has statins for breakfast… Crazy stuff! Statins are drugs with numerous side effects, which are described in the leaflet accompanying the aforementioned drug: joint pain, severe peeling of the skin; blisters of the skin, mouth, genitals and eyes, and liver disorders, among many others.
As you can see, these are problems that are almost always dealt with via other medications, not realizing that it may be the medication itself causing the ailments. The leaflet also states that these medications must be used only in the event that proper diet and physical activity fail. I can tell you from personal experience that half the patients who come to my office take statins without even having tried the dietary route because they thought their cholesterol levels were genetic. “Doctor, I have it because my mom did, and my grandmother before her…” When I hear this, my answer is as follows: “Dear patient, you have it because you are eating what your mother, grandmother, and predecessors ate.” Guess what the average Italian eats? Pasta, bread, potatoes, pizza, and all the other crap made of white flour and sugar! Now, you must be thinking: “But what does pasta have to do with cholesterol?” It has been known for years that blood cholesterol levels rise not because cholesterol is introduced by way of food, but because of a diet rich in flours, especially white flour and sugar. In short, the typical diet of the Western population, who are great experts in chemistry, biochemistry, medicine, and engineering, and who are even capable of reaching the moon, have received very little education when it comes to food science, which should be one of the main subjects taught to everyone starting in elementary school, in the name of prevention!
Today, we know that saturated fats are not the real culprits of atherosclerosis. As mentioned above, plaque does not form if an artery is not damaged, and it occurs only following continuous inflammation due to high levels of glycemia and insulin; in fact, atherosclerotic plaques are lifelong companions of diabetics. It is not a coincidence!
The reason we are afraid of saturated fats stems from the fact that, in 1967, a few scientists were paid by the sugar industry to write up false studies whereby the important role sugar plays in the genesis of atherosclerosis was omitted. These “studies” claimed that fats caused all cardiovascular disorders. For years, professionals have believed—and many continue to believe—in these studies, referring back to them whenever anyone makes the counterclaim that the cause of cardiovascular damage is actually sugars and not fats.
A series of studies done in France in 1979 has negated the link between the intake of saturated fats/cholesterol and cardiovascular diseases, leading to what is known today as the French paradox. These studies showed that the French, who are egg and cheese eaters, died less from cardiovascular diseases compared to other European countries. The scientists, who supported the false theory surrounding fats, interpreted this phenomenon as stemming from the heavy consumption of red wine. And so the beautiful fairy tale claiming wine is good for the arteries was born. It was purportedly thanks to resveratrol, (the flavonoid compound in wine), and its protective cardiovascular effects. Too bad that, in order to make use of such an effect, you would need to consume one liter of red wine a day, which would result in serious liver damage. At the time, they did not understand that the French, though large consumers of saturated fats, did not consume the same quantities of white flours and sugars as Italians, Americans and most other Europeans.
Finally, in September 2017, in an important conference on cardiology held in Barcelona, scientists presented a series of studies that actually showed that saturated fats could actually prevent strokes.
Saturated fats, in general, also promote hormonal production. In addition, some of them are transformed into other, less dangerous fats as soon as they enter our bodies. For example, the stearic acid found in cocoa is converted into oleic acid, a beneficial monounsaturated fat abundantly present in olive oil. Stearic acid is not dangerous at all because it is easily incorporated into our fat mass, which is entirely made up of stearic acid. Another example is palmitic acid, found in palm oil, which is also converted into stearic acid. Yes, you read that correctly! In reality, the supposedly horrible palm oil poses no danger whatsoever to our cardiovascular system, precisely because the biochemical pathway that carries palmitic acid leads to its transformation into stearic acid. Before pointing to palm oil as the menace responsible for atherosclerosis, I would examine the products in which it is contained. Do you know which products contain it? They are in creamy sweets full of sugar, glucose syrup, fructose and other sweeteners—all of the primary things responsible for cardiovascular diseases! These days, on all the packaging for cookies, sweets, and other products put out by the confectionery industry, you will find the wording: “Does not contain palm oil,” as if to mean “without any health risk.”
Other saturated fats which ought to be mentioned are the medium-chain fatty acids of coconut oil. These fatty acids are easily absorbed by the intestinal mucosa, even without the kicking off of the digestive processes, reaching the cells and penetrating them with the utmost ease, thereby providing immediate energy. For this reason, they are used by patients in the acute phase of serious intestinal autoimmune diseases (who are unable to feed themselves regularly), as well as by athletes.
