The Mediterranean Diet is Not Mediterranean

Author: Doug DiPasquale
Source: Sott.net

The Mediterranean diet is what every dietitian thinks of as the "holy grail" of diets. It basically adheres to the USDA Food Pyra- um, I mean MyPlate, and sticks to all the politically correct dietary dogmas of the day. Eat very little meat, some fish, lots and lots and lots of whole grains, vegetables and legumes, olive oil and as much red wine as you can possible manage to fit into the completely subjective term "moderate."

So it's no real surprise that when a bunch of mainstream doctors, researchers and dietitians get together to pick out the "Best Diets for Healthy Eating," as they do annually at U.S. News & World Report, they consistently pick the Mediterranean diet as number one (actually, this year it tied for number one with the DASH diet, which conforms even more closely to the government recommendations, adds in calorie-counting and misguidedly has you limit salt). It's also no surprise that 'health journalists' across the mediascape then dutifully report on these findings, talking about how great the diet is and offering advice on how to convert your eating regime to be more in line with what we're told Mediterranean people ate, like, half a century ago.

Yet another non-surprise is that this body of 'experts' consistently rank the Paleo and Ketogenic diets close to the bottom of their list (Keto is dead last this year), even above a number of diets you've probably never heard of - like, what the hell is the Spark Solution Diet? Or the Nutritarian Diet? They take points off anything that restricts carbohydrates because, "These diets provide fewer carbs than is recommended by government guidelines." They should actually rename the list "Best Authoritarian Diets for Government-Approved Eating to Make You a Good Citizen for 2018." Accurate and catchy. (You can use that one for free, guys.)

What they're ranking the diets on is half the problem, following the same old dogma about what's 'heart-healthy', what's good for weight loss (calorie-counting, anyone?) and giving creds for being low-sodium. You really can't give a lot of clout to a list that puts the Ornish Diet in it's Top Ten, unless it's a list of the "Best Diets for Ruining Your Health and Making You Miserable for 2018." (You can use that one for free too). What the list is not is an actual test of the effectiveness of the diets based on some kind of comparison testing. If it were, and they managed to check their biases, they might find the Paleo Diet to be superior on a number of fronts. The list is essentially the opinion of experts, which is to say, those who have been deemed experts due to how successfully they've been able to internalize the prevailing dietary ideology.

More here: https://www.sott.net/article/375800-The-Mediterranean-Diet-is-Not-Mediterranean-Nor-is-it-Particularly-Good