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The Healthiest Diet in the World!

The Mediterranean diet has been hailed as “The World’s Healthiest Diet”  Ayhan, founder of a leading restaurant group in New York for over 25 years, used his popular Mediterranean restaurant cuisine to create Ayhan’s Mediterranean Menu Plans®, a healthy weight loss program.  It combines delicious, healthy foods in the proper portions to ensure steady weight loss that stays off. 

The recipes, founded on two thousand years of cuisine are made for quick, easy preparation using high quality ingredients.  These award winning recipes have been analyzed and portion controlled by the nutritionist Debra Grossano. Now you can enjoy delicious meals that will help you lose weight and stay healthy, if you follow the plan’s ingredients and the proper portions.

Mediterranean cuisine has many healthy foods.  Debra enhanced this latent health factor by focusing each meal on balanced nutritional content and regulated portions.  From wine for a healthy heart to whole grains, dry fruits and vegetables for its high fiber, each meal has been created to offer the high nutritional value in keeping with your individual weight loss goal.

Ayhan is originally from the island of Cyprus, and spent many years studying Mediterranean cuisine from Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel and Sicily.  He opened his first Mediterranean restaurant in Long Island over 25 years ago and now has the largest group of Mediterranean restaurants in New York.  He used this knowledge and experience to create a well balanced, enjoyable, healthy diet that is proven to take off the weight for good.  The many health benefits of the Mediterranean diet include helping to prevent heart attacks, reducing blood pressure, and assist in reducing the risk of breast and prostate cancer.

All of the recipes are created to provide an enjoyable balanced meal and the ingredients selected are intended to promote health and weight reduction in a harmonious blend.  All the ingredients needed are easily available either online or at your local supermarket.  From fresh vegetables and fish to wine, the recipes offer the delicious dining experiences prepared in a few minutes.  The quality of easily prepared meals that are rich in flavor and use fresh ingredients is generally superior to most diet plans that use pre-packed or frozen meals.

Diet could cut risk of dementia

By Mary Brophy Marcus, USA TODAY

2/9/09

A new study suggests a diet laden with fish, olive oil, veggies and other foods common in Mediterranean-style cuisine may help ward off mild cognitive impairment, sometimes called borderline dementia. The study also suggests this diet reduces the chance of transitioning from mild cognitive decline to Alzheimer’s disease.

"We know from previous research that a healthy diet like this is protective for cardiovascular risk factors like cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes. Now this current study shows it may help brain function too," says Nikolaos Scarmeas, assistant professor of clinical neurology at the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University Medical Center.

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Scarmeas and other researchers at Columbia examined, interviewed and screened 1,393 individuals with healthy brains and 482 patients with mild cognitive impairment. Study participants were questioned about their eating habits.

The study, in this month’s Archives of Neurology, reports that over an average of 4½ years of follow-up, 275 of the 1,393 study participants who did not have mild cognitive impairment developed the condition. Those who had the highest adherence to a Mediterranean diet — a menu rich in vegetables, legumes and fish, low in fat, meat and dairy, and high in monounsaturated fats like those in olive oil — had a 28% lower risk of developing mild cognitive impairment than the one-third of participants who had the lowest scores for Mediterranean diet adherence. The middle one-third group had a 17% lower risk of developing mild cognitive impairment than those who ate the fewest Mediterranean foods.

Mediterranean Diet May Boost Alzheimer’s Survival
Patients eating most greens, grains, olive oil lived 4 years longer, study found

By Alan Mozes
Posted 9/10/07

MONDAY, Sept. 10 (HealthDay News) — Consuming what’s known as a Mediterranean diet — one loaded with fruits, vegetables, grains and olive oil — may help Alzheimer’s patients live longer, a new study suggests.

The observation comes after researchers tracked the dietary habits of people diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s. It follows on earlier work by the same team that suggests these diets may lower the risk of developing Alzheimer’s in the first place.

"This time, we found that Alzheimer’s patients who were following the Mediterranean diet had longer survival as compared to those who were following the diet less," said study lead author Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas, an assistant professor in the department of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.

The study is published in the Sept. 11 issue of Neurology.

According to the American Heart Association, diets native to the 16 countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea varies somewhat region to region. However, most regimens include a high intake of fruits, vegetables, breads, cereals, potatoes, beans, nuts, seeds, and olive oil. More than half of all fat-sourced calories in the Mediterranean diet come from monounsaturated fats, such as olive oil. Dairy, fish, poultry, and other sources of saturated fats are eaten at low to moderate levels, the AHA say.

Heart disease rates in Mediterranean nations are lower than in the United States, the AHA adds, although it’s not clear that diet alone is responsible for the difference.

To further examine the potential health benefits of the Mediterranean diet, Scarmeas’ team compared nutrition and disease progression between 1992 and 2002 among 192 patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s, all of whom lived in New York City.

All the patients were 65 and older, most were non-white, and all underwent initial physical and neuro-psychological exams to assess their cognitive capacities. Such evaluations were repeated every 18 months.

In addition, the patients completed questionnaires regarding their food consumption over a one-year period. Daily caloric intake was tallied for seven categories, including dairy, meat, fruits, vegetables, legumes, cereals, and fish.

At no time were patients given any information about nutrition, or instructions about what to eat or how much to eat of any particular food group.

Throughout the full study period, the researchers tracked patients for an average of four-and-a-half years, during which time 85 patients died.

Scarmeas’ group found that patients whose consumption habits most closely tracked that of the Mediterranean diet were 76 percent less likely to die in the study period than those whose food intake least mimicked the diet.

Compared with those whose diets most closely resembled a Western diet, Alzheimer’s patients who most closely followed the Mediterranean diet lived an average of four years longer.

A more moderate degree of adherence to the Mediterranean diet still translated into extra 1.3 years of survival, the researchers said. That’s equal to a 29 percent to 35 percent reduced risk for dying during the study period.

The findings appeared to hold up regardless of patient body mass index, gender, ethnicity, or educational background. Age differences had a nearly imperceptible impact on the findings.

The researchers did not examine how differences in end-of-life care protocols — such as the possible use of artificial feeding mechanisms and antibiotic therapies — might have affected survival in some patients.

Scarmeas emphasized that more work needs to be done to tease out the diet’s effects.

"For now, we can only speak about the tendency we found in a whole population," he cautioned. "It is possible that particular people happen to have a constellation of several other factors that contribute to a risk for dying or delay their mortality. So, right now, we can only say that in this observational study we found, in general, that the more you follow this Mediterranean diet, the later you die, even after the onset of Alzheimer’s disease."

Greg M. Cole is associate director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and a neuroscientist with the Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System. He described the findings as provocative but not definitive.

"It could be that the Mediterranean diet is slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s," he acknowledged. "But there could also be other explanations. For example, a lot of people who have Alzheimer’s also have cardiovascular disease. The risk factors for both illnesses show a lot of overlap. And it is a pretty well established benefit that the Mediterranean diet protects against heart disease."

"So, it could be that the Mediterranean diet is actually slowing down the accompanying spectrum of vascular problems that lead to stroke and heart attack and other problems associated with a cardiovascular disease that lead to mortality," explained Cole. "So, death is not as good a measure here as the progression of cognitive decline. Is the diet actually slowing down the cognitive decline of Alzheimer’s itself? That’s the next question. And, if so, that would certainly be a very significant result."

Mediterranean Diet Pyramid – The Key to Successful Dieting!

The Mediterranean Diet Pyramid has been designed by studying the eating tendencies of the people of the Mediterranean region.  Amounts are non specific to indicate the variation in use between these ingredients, depending on many conditions.  This general diagram shows the basic foundation Ayhan and Debra used to design a unique weight loss program catered to your desires while offering all the benefits of the Mediterranean diet.

Food derived from plants naturally hold prominence in the diet and these include: fruits vegetables, potatoes, breads, grains, beans, nuts and seeds.  An emphasis is placed on foods that require minimal processing and when possible are available locally.  This helps maximize the health benefits of these foods.  Olive oil is the principal supplier of fat intake in the Mediterranean diet and replaces other fats, such as butter, corn oil and margarine.  This can seriously reduce saturated fat intake, with accompanying positive health & weight benefits.

Low to moderate amounts of cheese and yogurt may be served daily, though it is preferable to use low-fat to non-fat versions of these products.  Moderate consumption of wine is allowed with meals.  Recent studies have indicated the health benefits of moderate consumption of wine but it should be limited to one or two glasses a day (one for women). 

In turn, a weekly allowance is made for low to moderate amounts of fish and poultry, and up to 4 eggs per week. Fish is favored over poultry for its health benefits.  Red meat may be eaten in small amounts, though lean meats are favored for health factors.  This wide ranging diet should be supplemented by regular physical activity to promote fitness.

Ayhan offers a wide range of products to be used in preparing Ayhan’s Mediterranean Diet.  These products are available online or at your local supermarket.  There are a variety of All Natural diet products, low carb products, and prepared foods to go along with more conventional foods such as: dried fruit and snacks, nuts, kosher food, olives, grains, chocolates, and pastries.  This short list goes a long way in showing the wide variety of food available in Ayhan’s Mediterranean Menu Plans® Diet and proves you can enjoy fresh, wholesome meals and lose weight at the same time.

Quick and Easy Great Tasting Meals!

A diet is much easier to follow with delicious food to eat. You will have to be eating the food every day you might as well be able to enjoy it!  That is the beauty behind Ayhan’s Mediterranean Menu Plans® Diet, the food is great tasting and healthy!  This feature supplementing the great weight loss results is what makes Ayhan’s Mediterranean Menu Plans® weight loss program the best all around diet in the world.
      
In the hectic lifestyles most of us have, few of us have all the time in the world to prepare gourmet meals. Ayhan’s Mediterranean Menu Plans® Diet is styled around the modern lifestyle and is intended to offer high quality meals in a limited amount of time.  Most of the recipes are designed for less than 20 minutes of time spent in the kitchen preparing and cooking, many with less than ten!  Fresh home cooked delicious meals that help you lose weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle. It sounds almost too good to be true but looking at a sample recipe will quickly convince you otherwise:

A diet that provides a healthy, easily prepared meal, using fresh vegetables in 10 ten minutes is something you can’t afford to ignore.  A sampling of one day of a weekly regimen provides additional proof of the quick, easy delectable meals offered in Ayhan’s Mediterranean Menu Plans® Diet.  All of the meals are able to be made in 15 minutes or less and are portioned to give the proper amount of essential vitamins and minerals, such as Vitamin E and C, and Iron, along with limiting saturated fats and cholesterol.  This healthy well balanced approach to designing meals can be substantially modified to suit any taste. 

With this in mind, Ayhan’s Mediterranean Menu Plans® Diet offers those who join My M Club the opportunity to evaluate the recipes from the award winning Ayhan restaurants.  This allows Ayhan and Debra the chance to learn about your tastes and to design dynamic new tantalizing recipes from classic Mediterranean ingredients to diversify your dietary intake while exciting your taste buds.