Some weight loss companies have used "The Mediterranean diet" as a name for a diet consisting mainly of food that are eaten by the population of the Mediterranean countries. By eating such foods as one of the ways to increase metabolism in addition to calorie counting and exercise, people will lose weight fairly fast. Quite frankly, the variations in dieting culture among these countries and even within regions of each country is too broad to call it a specitic diet. So, rather than talking about a pure diet, it is more appropriate to call it the Mediterranean-style diet. Because even with all this variation in food culture and dieting practice, their dietary pattern has something in common:.

The Mediterranean people eat much fruit, vegetables, potatoes, beans, nuts, seeds, bread and other cereals. The protein they eat is mostly fish and poultry but in pretty low amounts and they don't eat much red meat. They also eat eggs as often as four times a week. Their most important fat source is olive oil which is monounsaturated fat. They drink wine in low to moderate amounts.

If we compare the Mediterranean-style diet with the average American diet, we'll find that the average Mediterranean-style diet contains less saturated fat than the average American diet. More than half of the fat calories in a Mediterranean-style diet come from monounsaturated fats, mainly from olive oil. We also know that monounsaturated fat doesn't raise blood cholesterol levels as much as saturated fat does.

At the same time statistics show that the incidence of heart disease in Mediterranean countries is lower than in the United States. Death rates are lower too. At least a part of these differences can be explained by different dieting patterns, there are also other lifestyle factors that play a part. Until we know more about it, why not eat Mediterranean-style food more often?