A study published in PloS in 2011 (http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0016268), demonstrated that consumption of trans fatty acids (TFA) was associated with a significantly increased risk of developing depression. Compared with individuals who consumed a diet low in TFA, individuals with higher consumption of TFA had up a 48% increase risk of developing depression.

Cardiovascular disease and depression may share some common pathways ultimately related to subtype of fat intake. The adverse effects of TFA from a cardiac standpoint are believed to be the result of inflammatory substances produced from TFA metabolism (cytokines), as well as damage to the lining of blood vessels (endothelial dysfunction) from TFA byproducts. It turns out that inflammatory mediators, the cytokines, are also significantly elevated in depressed patients, along with noted damage to blood vessels-just as seen in patients with cardiovascular disease.

In a recent study published in the March, 2012 issue of Public Health Nutrition [http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8480071&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S1368980011001856 ] researchers examined the role that consumption of fast food and processed food had on development of depression. In a cohort of nearly 9,000 adults in Spain, individuals who routinely ate “fast food” (hamburgers, hot dogs, sausages, pizza) were about 40% more likely to develop depression than individuals who consumed minimal to none of these foods. Results of this study also demonstrated that the risk of developing depression was significantly greater with increasing amounts of fast food consumed. In addition, those participants in the study who routinely consumed commercially baked goods including muffins, donuts, and croissants were also at a significant risk of developing depression.

In summary, eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and fish is less likely to lead to developing depression. Those who consume processed meats, fried foods, excessive sweets, refined cereals and high fat dairy products have an elevated risk for cardiovascular disease and resulting depressive symptoms. Olive oil contains bioactive polyphenols with anti-inflammatory properties which may help repair and stabilize the lining of blood vessels (endothelium), helping to reduce the progression of depressive disorders.

Studies also suggest that those who follow the Mediterranean diet- which places a focus on fruits, vegetables and fish, and limiting meat and dairy products, have lower rates of Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons disease as they age–another medical benefit aside from reducing the incidence of depression.

PICTURES: Yum – or yuck? 20 freakish fried foods

The study, published in today’s British Medical Journal, surveyed the cooking methods of 40,757 healthy adults in Spain – ages 29 to 69 – over 11 years. Participants were asked about their diet and cooking methods. Researchers assessed the amount of fried food consumed.

After 11 years, the researchers reported 606 events linked to heart disease – such as a stroke or heart attack – and 1,134 deaths. Upon closer examination, heart disease events and deaths were not statistically tied to fried food consumption.  The study authors, led by Professor Pilar Guallar-Castilon from Autonomous University of Madrid, concluded that “In a Mediterranean country where olive and sunflower oils are the most commonly used fats for frying, and where large amounts of fried foods are consumed both at and away from home, no association was observed between fried food consumption and the risk of coronary heart disease or death.”

In Western countries such as the U.S., frying is one of the most common methods of cooking, but typically solid and re-used oils are used – not olive or sunflower.

Fried food has been found to increase some heart disease risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity, but a clear link between fried food and heart disease has not previously been investigated.

Does this study mean it’s time to celebrate with some deep-fried Kool-Aid?

Not quite. Other factors may have contributed to the results, namely that the overall diet habits of those studied are not the same as most Americans’.

“The bottom line here is, most of what they were consuming were these healthful oils – olive and sunflower – and a lot of fish,” Andrea Giancoli, a Santa Monica, Calif. dietitian and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, told WebMD. “The Mediterranean diet is different from ours.”

A large-scale study of more than 530,000 individuals found the Mediterranean diet contributed to health benefits including a lower risk for obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Story originally published on: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57365614-10391704/fried-food-bad-for-heart-not-if-its-cooked-in-olive-oil/

Quick – what comes to mind when you hear “Mediterranean diet”? For most people, this conjures up an image of olive oil and hummus, or a feta cheese and cucumber salad. These foods are part of the Mediterranean Diet – but if you ask a nutrition expert familiar with the research into this healthful diet and way of life, you’ll hear about more than just dishes you might order at a Mediterranean restaurant.

This diet, which in scientific terms is modeled after the traditional diet and lifestyle of mostly poor rural villagers from the island of Crete during the 1950s and ‘60s, is proven like no other to prevent the kinds of chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s that are so troubling to the modern world.

After decades of research, the essential components of the Mediterranean Diet are understood, so you don’t have to eat exclusively Greek food, or even love falafel, to reap the benefits. There are 12 essential qualities of a Mediterranean diet:

• Vegetables are eaten several times per day, raw and cooked, and potatoes don’t count.
• Fruit is also eaten multiple times per day.
• Legumes, including soy, beans, and peas are a daily staple.
• Whole grains are another daily staple (including whole wheat bread).
• Nuts are a regular item, several times per week.
• Olive oil is the main cooking and culinary oil.*
• Fish is eaten more than once per week.
• Saturated fat from butter, meat and eggs is rarely eaten.
• Red meat is rarely eaten.
• Deli, luncheon and cured meats are almost never eaten.
• Refined sugars and sweets are rarely eaten and reserved for special occasions.
• Alcohol is enjoyed in moderation (1-2 drinks per day).

You don’t have to follow every one of these principles, and you don’t have to follow them perfectly. What is important is to do them more often than not: most of the time. The more you follow them, the better it is for your health.

You may notice some items that are conspicuously absent from the list above: fried foods, fast food, junk food, and packaged and manufactured foods. Dairy is not considered an essential part of the diet, but when included it is generally in the low-fat or non-fat form. The overall picture is one of high quality, wholesome foods.

A couple of points deserve special mention: First, this is not a low-fat diet. The Cretans ate plenty of fat, nearly all of it from extra-virgin olive oil, but very little saturated fat. Second, the villagers didn’t have TVs or computers, and most of them got around by walking, often for miles in hilly country, with donkeys in tow. So, the Mediterranean lifestyle is the exact opposite of sedentary. Since the calories in their diet were in balance with their exercise, they weren’t overweight or obese. Finally, a big part of their lifestyle was enjoyment of life, of family, and of community. So they felt socially connected to their community, and, though they worked hard, play was an integral part of their lives.

We could learn a lot from what, at the time, appeared to be a “backwards” way of life, and what now is probably a nearly extinct way of life. But by preserving the best of that diet and lifestyle in our own lives, we will have received a wonderful gift of health from the Mediterranean.

Added to Wellness, Nutrition, Illness Prevention, Diet, Anti-Aging, Alternative Medicine on Fri 01/20/2012

US News and World Report released the 2012 edition of its annual rankings of best diets. This year it includes a list of the easiest diets to follow.

Weight Watchers took the top spot, followed by Jenny Craig, the Mediterranean diet, Slim Fast and Volumetrics.

For this list, programs received points for convenience, ease of initial adjustment fullness and taste. An independent panel of 22 experts, including nutritionists, dietitians and cardiologists, reviews 20 popular diet profiles.

One of the panelists said the ease of sticking with a diet is an important factor in determining how well a diet will work.

Originally posted on http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/health&id=8490538

By Linda Thrasybule

NEW YORK | Tue Oct 25, 2011 4:16pm EDT

(Reuters Health) – Women who eat a Mediterranean-style diet — high in fruits, vegetables, fish and whole grains — are less likely to have trouble getting pregnant, hints a new study from Spain.

The findings add to a growing body of evidence linking the Mediterranean diet to all kinds of health effects, including lower risks of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

But Dr. Jorge Chavarro, who was not part of the study, cautioned that the new results are based on observations, not an experiment.

“There’s always the possibility that this association is not causal,” said Chavarro, who studies nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

Researchers looked at nearly 500 women with fertility problems and more than 1,600 women of the same age who had at least one child. Based on questionnaires, they measured how closely women followed either a Western-style or a Mediterranean diet.

The Western diet consisted of red meat, fast food, whole-fat dairy products, potatoes, refined grains and sugar-sweetened soda, and was not linked to fertility.

In other words, there was no difference in fertility problems between women who followed this type of diet religiously and those who followed it less strictly.

But the picture changed for women with a Mediterranean diet. About 17 percent of those who stuck to it meticulously said they’d had trouble getting pregnant, while 26 percent of the women who followed that diet least closely had fertility problems.

“The Mediterranean type diet may have a protective effect on insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes,” said study researcher Dr. Estefanía Toledo, who studies nutrition at the University of Navarra in Spain.

Insulin resistance means that the body’s cells have a hard time absorbing sugar from the blood stream. But researchers have also found a link between insulin resistance and ovulation — when the egg is released from the ovary and can be fertilized.

“Insulin has other functions in the body,” Chavarro told Reuters Health. “It also regulates a number of hormones, in particular the amount of hormones needed for ovulation which is essential for reproduction.”

Chavarro thinks the Mediterranean diet indirectly influences ovulation.

“The Mediterranean diet contains nutrients that help your body clear sugar from the bloodstream while using less insulin to do this job,” he said. “This makes it easier for the body to keep the balance of reproductive hormones.”

For women who are thinking about getting pregnant, Chavarro sees no harm in adopting the Mediterranean diet.

But for women who are having fertility problems, he said, “we don’t have enough data to show that this diet pattern can help you get pregnant as a result of fertility treatment.”

More than six million U.S. women of childbearing age have difficulty getting pregnant or staying pregnant, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But men might also want to watch their diet and lifestyle if they are interested in maximizing their chances of becoming fathers. A recent study by Chavarro and colleagues found that overweight men have lower sperm counts than their leaner peers.

“Other than that, there’s very little we know about body composition and male fertility,” he said. “That’s an area that we’re working on right now.”

SOURCE: bit.ly/puuLP3 Fertility and Sterility, September 22, 2011.

The results of a decade long study by researchers at the University of Maastricht suggest that eating a Mediterranean diet could extend your lifespan by up to 15 years.

The study, which involved 120,000 people aged 55-69, showed eating fish, grains, fruit, vegetables, nuts and olive oil helped women live up to 15 years longer and men up to eight years.

The Dutch researchers, who published their work in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, worked out a healthy lifestyle “score” based on what participants ate, if they smoked, how much they drank, whether they exercised and how much they weighed.

The healthiest participants were those who ate a Mediterranean-type diet, did not smoke, were a normal weight and who exercised regularly.

Piet van den Brandt, professor of epidemiology at Maastricht University, explained: “Very few research studies worldwide have analysed the relationship between a combination of lifestyle factors and mortality in this way.”

‘This study shows that a healthy lifestyle can lead to significant health benefits. Furthermore, the effects of a Mediterranean diet were more evident in women than in men. Within this diet, nuts, vegetables and alcohol intake had the biggest impact on lower mortality rates.”

Are you an advocate of the Mediterranean diet or more of a McDonalds type? Let us know below…

for the original article visit http://lifestyle.aol.co.uk/2011/08/04/how-the-mediterranean-diet-could-help-you-live-15-years-longer/

The Mediterranean diet — rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and healthy oils — has been praised for its ability to stave off obesity, diabetes, heart disease and even arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease.

All the benefits come to naught, however, if no one is willing to follow it. While the obesity epidemic continues to grow in the United States, even those native to the birthplace of the Mediterranean diet have forsaken their healthful culinary roots for a more modern, processed, obesity-inducing diet.

As early as 2008, while the Mediterranean diet was experiencing a surge of popularity stateside, a United Nations report by Josef Schmidhuber, senior economist at the U.N’s Food and Agriculture Organization, wrote that the diet had “decayed into a moribund state” back in the 16 Mediterranean countries that made it famous.

Instead, those living around the Mediterranean wanted food that was “too fat, too salty and too sweet,” Schmidhuber said. Today, that trend continues, with researchers in the region reporting that more and more, young people are shunning traditional diets for processed food and a sedentary lifestyle.

“How tragic, then, that rather than importing the Med diet to the U.S., we are exporting to the Med region the very dietary and lifestyle practices that have given us rampant obesity and diabetes, and unsustainable disease care costs,” said Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center.

But is the growing love of fast food and soda simply the exportation of the American diet, or is it the product of modern living and affluence? That even Mediterranean young people have opted for these kinds of cheap, fast, convenience food options might shed light on why the Western world, in general, is rapidly expanding its waistline.

Although undoubtedly one of the healthiest diets, the Mediterranean diet has received some flack in the United States for being an expensive one. The fresh produce, olive oil and fish that make up the staples of the diet are all many times more expensive than the processed meats, fats and carbohydrates that are the staples of junk food diets.

“Studies have shown that if you shop around the edges of the supermarket, where all the fresh produce and dairy is, you pay about 10 times more for every 100 calories of food you get when compared to shopping in the middle of the store, where the chips, snacks and processed foods are,” said Dr. Carla Wolper, senior clinical nutritionist at New York Obesity Research Center at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City.

“The amount of junk food consumed in the U.S. has mostly to do with how cheap it is, especially in the recession.”

Other research has tracked how those on welfare eat and found that how much junk and fast food people consume is tied to how recently they received their welfare check, Wolper said.

“When people get their checks, they tend to spend it quickly, and toward the end while they’re waiting for the next check, that’s when they eat the most junk food,” she said.

TO read the original article visit: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Diet/mediterraneans-ditch-diet-made-famous/story?id=14070596

In the first annual “Healthiest Meal on Long Island” competition, the Healthy Media Group and a panel of experts reviewed in the area the best restaurants.  The search was extensive. But in the end, the choice was clear: Ayhan’s Free Range Chicken Rosto from Ayhan’s Mediterranean Restaurants.

Acclaimed for their authentic Mediterranean cuisine, Ayhan’s restaurants have always been synonymous with quality ingredients and carefully prepared meals. Such consistency has earned them the loyalty of many Long Islanders who trust that a dinner at Ayhan’s will satisfy the senses without sacrificing value. And Ayhan would not have it any other way. “Growing up in Cyprus, everything on the plate was always natural,” he says. “That was just the Mediterranean diet.”

Ayhan’s Free Range Chicken Rosto features Murray’s organic roasted chicken, basmati rice, and a medley of vegetables, including broccoli, carrots, and white cabbage. “It is a delight to the senses on every level,” reports Dr. Garry D’Brant, a clinical nutritionist and dietician. “The fact that Ayhan can offer a healthier choice to the public and make it taste so wonderfully delicious is a credit to his methods and concern for the health of his patrons.”



When the meal first arrives, the rich aromas deliver before you even have a chance to ask your server for more of that homemade Turkish bread. “Immediately you could smell the delicacy of the spices and the richness of the flavors,” remembers Dr. D’Brant. “The first bite did not disappoint.” Marinated for 24-48 hours in orange, grapefruit, and lemon juices, garlic, paprika, black pepper, sea salt, and onions, the chicken is then double baked to melt off fat and ensure extra crispy skin. Drip pans catch any excess fat and oil. “Over spicing and salting is a characteristic of poor quality or quickly prepared food,” says Dr. D’Brant. “Ayhan’s choice of sea salt should be commended.” The use of citrus juices is also a healthy, natural choice that makes for a remarkably flavorful dish.

Basmati rice could not have been a better choice to complement the juicy quality of the chicken. Non-glutinous, aromatic, and slender-grained, basmati rice exhibits a sweet taste and soft texture that soaks up the dish’s most satisfying flavors. As for the vegetables, that added far more than just color, they were tender, crunchy, and almost a meal in their own right. “The portion is worth every cent,” points out Dr. D’Brant. “Great value and healthy food put together are not something that most diners have an opportunity to experience.” Perhaps the most telling sign that we all incredible satisfied, as the meal came to a close, was that we almost forgot (at least I did) that we were there to evaluate a meal based on what it contributed to our health. Ultimately, we had a splendid meal with great company in a comfortable setting. What more could you ask for when eating out?

Ayhan’s formula for success is relatively simple, but that is exactly why it works. Buy the best ingredients, take the time to prepare them, and establish relationships with your patrons. At the heard of it is a genuine love for food and the act of sharing it with other, and when you care about the people you are dining with, you also care about the quality of what they are eating. “We have to make our food choices work for our health, not against it,” Dr. D’Brant reminds us. “Fast food does us no favors, but food that is prepared slowly and with care nourishes our bodies as well as our souls.” Ayhan, his staff, and his patrons would wholeheartedly have to agree.

- Melissa C. Navia