Lesson 8 Part 1 - Opening Lecture

oh is anna jason she's a nutritionist from mit magical wow and she also has the origins wow can you say that again okay so i'm going to talk about mediterranean diet so you can get the sequel okay what is it what is this mediterranean diet that you hear so much about okay so there's no one particular official mediterranean diet people think it is but it's not it's really a food pattern that is shared by countries that room the mediterranean sea and you could put more countries here i didn't go crazy um you know you could add cyprus and you could add it i don't know if that's not a country but it's a region i'll say region so that's what we consider to be mediterranean that i'm going to get into the more specifics later long time ago 1958 ansel keys organized a seven-country study and those were the countries that were in his study and he had a hypothesis that a diet was very related to heart disease so he studied this for decades and then it did show that there was a lower prevalence of hypercholesterolemia that's high blood cholesterol and heart disease in populations of greece and italy especially greek island of crete and he attributed that to diet the cretins had like a 90 less heart attack or heart problems which is huge huge yeah so he thought oh it's their diet and what about their diet um he thought it was the fact yeah since then right there have been many more studies that have looked at this hypothesis we had the framingham heart study which was done here in massachusetts nurses health study i think that was still going on women's health initiative the conclusions and the discussion from all the studies in the papers are that plants plant fats yield better cardiovascular health than animal fats so it's the same thing that ansel keys discover to say that animal fats in the abundance that americans ate them not a good thing as i was looking at all the studies you know preparing for this i was amazed that i was amazed that hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of studies not one of them said oh my mediterranean diet is not good since 204 i looked at 13 studies there is strong evidence and these are from the studies themselves the kaboom the researcher's conclusion strong evidence that replacing saturated fats with monounsaturated fats is associated with reducing cardiovascular mortalities or illnesses around heart disease and how does it do that how how does the switching of the fats reducing bad cholesterol that's ldl cholesterol decreasing blood triglycerides and reducing inflammation those are some of the mechanisms that help reduce cardiovascular risk and also more recently you know diabetes has really become the prevalence in america and the world strong evidence that monounsaturated fatty acids are associated with improving type 2 diabetes it makes people less insulin systems so there's more health benefits it's not just cardiovascular health mediterranean diet has been reducing alzheimer's it's been shown to reduce parkinson's disease reduce the risk of depression reduce the risk of diabetes studies to show that mediterranean diet improves brain cognition so you think better which is good you remember things better so participating to the seminars yeah you're gonna be smarter tomorrow mediterranean diet has been shown to protect against some cancer's breasts and that should say prostate oh my god i said free state see what happens with spell check yeah okay so yeah um and living longer which is amazing there was one study that said people who follow meditate you know live like three years longer so oh and weight loss yeah weight management people who follow a more mediterranean style can be more successful at managing their weight than a low fat diet for instance okay so this is just a study just to show you that they there are hundreds of them that exist this is uh from nutrition journal it's recent people were following a mediterranean diet the people that found that followed the mediterranean diet more had less inflammation which is involved in disease reduce oxidative stress you know the free radicals higher circulating levels of antioxidants all which are associated with reduced risk of disease in general so that's one study with the mid diet here's the prostate cancer this was done in spain they looked at meta-analysis and they looked at a lot of studies and said here that they cited several characteristics of meta diet including highly data consumption of fruits vegetables grains tubers legumes olive oil is the main source of fats low intake of animal products and regular consumption of small fish so another study eating a diet with omega-3 fatty acids can improve insulin sensitivity and that's got to do with diabetes again here's another study adherence to mediterranean diet is associated with the risk of diabetes separate from the insulin eating a mediterranean-style diet rich in olive oil whole grains fish fruit may protect aging brains from damage associated with cognitive problems and so here's just a quick excerpt after reviewing the brain mris of the older people they found that people who followed the mediterranean diet more closely were up to 36 percent less likely to show brand damages here's another study from neurology and they're recent so again this was protecting against strokes so what is it about this mediterranean diet that can do it sounds like a miracle diet so the first thing the first big characteristic and i think everybody knows is the fact that the fat source is different in the mediterranean compared to us and western diets and it is olive oil and it's lots of olive oil mediterranean diets can be up to 40 50 calories from fat so it's a lot of fat that's not a low-fat diet but they're not fat you see so fat doesn't make you fat the big characteristic here and what ansel keys discovered was that or what his hypothesis was that it was this kind of fat that had healthy benefits and just so you know that's an omega omega-9 and i can also tell you that's pretty small but i just wanted to remind myself there's there's many other compounds in olive oil think of olive oil as like a fresh fruit nectar this is not an an oil that has been highly processed to get its fat like sesames and soy and those are made differently this is just the fruit and i have to mechanically get it out it's not with chemicals it shouldn't be anyone but so it's so it's got a lot of fresh compounds in there the fresher the better there were studies that say if you have fresh olive oil it's healthier for you than not so good quality olive oil okay so then mediterranean diets also have other fats in their diet they're not from olive oil they're not omega-9 they're omega-6 i know you've heard that and we never refer to this we always call this monounsaturated nuts and seeds sesames cashews walnuts those are considered polyunsaturated fats there's other fats in the diet fish those in the omega-3 polyunsaturated these are mono and these are polyunsaturated so fish is also very prominent in the mediterranean diet okay the other characteristic fresh fruits and vegetables are prominent they are not an afterthought the vegetables are the highlight of many meals there is meat in the mood training diet the portion is smaller it's just not always there living vegetarian meals so fresh fruits and vegetables are very very high and again this is part of the health benefits it's not just the fats so legumes uh and i by legumes i dried peas lentils beans the other thing that is left out of many much of the literature of fresh herbs and spices and i'll show you later that there are compounds in here there's vitamins there's minerals and i think that the key to the mediterranean diet is that all the foods there works synergistically oh and then there's the plain yogurt and cheese and those are fermented products i wouldn't say there's a lot of milk milk i do not see a lot of whole grains but it's there because of the literature and i think that other cultures use more like when you get more middle eastern turkey there's boulder etc but in greece italy we don't use whole grains they do now because they know it's supposed to be good but that's not i don't think that's i don't know if they were eating that in the 1950s maybe they were red wine is part of the mediterranean diet the big difference is they have much less saturated fat because they use foods and how do they get it it's because they don't eat a lot of meat their portion is small and they don't have it frequently like every day the other difference right is less salty and sweet processed foods america has lots of these cheeses potato chips pretzels just again i think that these and studies have shown these all of these fresh herbs and spices have health benefits they're not there just for flavor when you think about parsley lots of vitamin c vitamin a flavonoids these are compounds in foods that have health benefits and fresh garlic another very common thing it's not chopped already and it's not garlic powder like we would do here in the mediterranean diet these are all fish and there are dep sulphur compounds are helpful so in 1992 the mediterranean diet you know we had our pyramid here then a group came out with a mediterranean diet pyramid so for those of you who like visuals this is the mediterranean diet on the bottom you know we're supposed to have the most of our foods come from here fresh vegetables grains olive oil they're grouped all together and then less protein less dairy and then meats and sweets are put in the same category which will feed very little yeah don't forget they have all this activity here too so this these are some mediterranean lifestyle and behaviors that i noticed myself when i go to greece all the time there's no such thing as eating in front of the tv or snacking that's not a concept i don't know if that's india in italy no you have your meals and you're done there's no no concept of that like oh well i in my practice here at medical that's a huge issue for us americans we're like oh what do i snack on at night people say i say well if you're not helping me don't stop uh they're sharing plates a lot of sharing it's not always common that everybody gets their own plate like we do a group goes out they've had their main meal in the daytime so the nighttime is kind of on less food and they share so the portions are smaller they have smaller plates they have their main uh meal in the middle of the day and there's always a nap which is my favorite part and there's also lots of walking this is another thing i notice people are walking like in most european cities or any big city lots of walking okay so i'm going to show you some common food patterns of greece real food there's no convenience process thing garlic in a jar and cheetos in a bag and frozen dinner not common at all no snack foods like bars we're obsessed with this doesn't exist it's fruit it's vegetable you know meat cheese done but no one knows not good may meals eat it too i think i said that meat is a much smaller part of the meal if it's present it's a small portion like three four ounces which is like a deck of cards which is what we say should be here in this country then a lot of one pot meals they have lots of vegetable dishes and i have pictures to show you that are in olive oil and it's the main entree it's not a side dish you will see i hope it looks good yeah fruit is a dis is fruit is the dessert greeks never have desserts after the meal and i don't know about italians but not every day not every day when sunday okay desserts are a special time for greeks and they're eating alone like oh i'll have a coffee and a dessert for the other day it's it's an event there's no dessert oh like we do here it's all fruit is always served at the meal so it's not a snack and it's there and then that's my business about the sweets are eaten at a separate time so these are some common foods i don't know if you've ever heard of these who has been to whole foods you see giant beans in the salad bar have you seen those okay i have some of those that you're going to see those are usually cooked in a big oil dish stewed green beans is an is an entree you eat with a salad a piece of bread you're done uh bean soup you'll see i have stuff everybody knows what stuffed grapefruit is it's a great leaf a big leaf so it's a green leafy vegetable and then you stop it you take rice with lots of oil fresh spices maybe pine nuts maybe raisins put it on the leaf you roll the leaf and then you cook it these are also very common in grapefruit boiled greens you take beet greens you take not spinach you take swiss chard you just steam it or boil it put oil and lemon on it and that's the vegetables yeah lentil soup and the famous spinach pie yeah here we make it in america that is usually with butter in between the filo in grease it's often olive oil okay these are these are mine i made those and i had them for dinner for lunch actually that's my little dog dish i didn't have time to make it look good but those are those giant beans and this is spinach carrots garlic they're huge yeah yeah they're like giant lima beans in a tomato and there's oil there if this was a if this was a more greek greek dish you would see the oil seeping out and i try and make it look calorie because you know i gotta worry about those things and then these i got this from the internet i thought that was a good picture these are those string beans this is a main dish it's not a side again it's oil tomato onion garlic this doesn't have a lot of oil but the next photo is my mother-in-law's who lives in greece and you can see big difference you see there's a lot of oil out there lots and she used to put more that was how don't forget oil and fat at a meal keeps us full fat when you when you have a no fat day no fat food you're going to be hungry and you're going to want to overeat usually carbohydrates yeah so these are stuffed grape leaves and squash blossoms so again i call this like real vegetarian food not isolated soy protein here's a greek salad a real greek salad what's different about this yes there's no lettuce anything else there's not half a pound of feta cheese on here and that creamy greek dressing which is not great just tomato which is divine i love it okay so now i have my famous tips of how you're gonna get a mediterranean diet here in america and by the way there was a study i didn't put in here but it was talking about how transporting can you transport the mediterranean diet to other countries like australia and america and the study said yes you can so there's hope for us okay so you're gonna do it cook and eat home more often because you know what you're doing you have a chance to eat healthier eating out all the time is not a healthy activity okay so in your cooking eat vegetarian one or two times a week as much as you want most people who are not vegetarians never have just a vegan meal that doesn't have this which is not the healthiest thing all those tofu i mean tofu by itself is much healthier than the isolated soy protein burgers and tofu dogs and all of that so so that's one way for you to get a mediterranean diet is try a more mediterranean vegetarian meal um okay so some of those are i didn't have pictures of falafel or hummus but those are also mediterranean very healthy dishes chickpeas tahini again the same yeah sesame seeds yeah good fats yeah uh use extra virgin olive oil for cooking salad for your cooking add that to salads don't use salad dressing which i think is my next tip because you don't get a good oil in a salad dressing and you get sugar and you get thickener and you get tons of salt and you get sugar and if you can get yourself a good olive oil put your own oil and vinegar or lemon you'll be healthier and you'll be getting the flavonoids and all those wonderful ingredients and it tastes better at first you you might not if you're used to salad dressing when i was growing up we had salad dressing that was what we had and we loved it my brother and i we shunned the olive oil and said well it's motor oil oh we didn't like it because this italian dressing was so sweet and sugar and spicy it's not 380 but it's not it's just like the greek dressing is not there's no dressing in greece it's just same yeah it's the same yeah and it's healthier so that's one way you can do it yes so i think i've really heard the support but what's the difference between the extroversion the version the mod version so oh good it's written there yeah extra virgin would be the first pressing and it would not be over acidic and over like have foul tasting foul flavors in it so it has to do with the quality and like the first pressing as opposed to because you can keep pressing this you know get the first extraction then keep pressing and then you get not so good olive oil and then you can have it mixed there was a big scandal i was telling you about that in a book i read big scandal with olive oil they mix soya oil in it because it's very profitable et cetera et cetera so that's the question yeah if it says pure or if it says blended i wouldn't buy it because they do sometimes they think that's cute it's not bad pure is not good pure is like the one of the last qualities correct pure is inferior to extra so it's the first pressing the extra version is the best and it's it's more expensive but um it's also the most it should be the most healthy one the other ones are not as healthy as this one so this is yeah so another way you can do is steam your leafy green vegetables branch out get some escarole you put it in your soups you can i boil mine boil i steam it and i put oil and lemon that's my side with a piece of chicken and i might have something else with it and that's my meal otherwise i don't get lippy green vegetables but this way is easy you also can then put lots of garlic and lots of oil in the frying pan and cook it that way you could do that too make your own salad dressing with real extra virgin olive oil so you don't use salad dressings because there's nothing healthy about the salad dressings we buy nothing they're wicked salty look at sugar reduce your intake of desserts put some parameters you know um around desserts so that you have it maybe on the weekend you have it twice a week you don't have cookies every single day or just because it's thursday night at nine o'clock i'm having cookies in front of the tv that's another thing we as americans struggle with that we want sweets all the time for no reason i think in these cultures it's used more for a celebration oh it's a holiday it's a special time it isn't just three o'clock on tuesday and i'll have a huge rebecca's cookie like this that's like a 600 calorie investment there with butter cookies are made with butter um here another way eat plain yogurt yolk and put your own fruit and maybe a drizzle the plain there's another classic greek food greek night honey nuts could go here too as opposed to those yogurts that have a lot of sugar added to them we like sweet foods here yes okay um have meat be a small part of the meal fine we said that eat fish with small bones enjoy smell sardines necklace on packaged foods boxed foods have this instead and then i think that's it i have one slide that says i'm gonna challenge you all what can you do now so after tonight after you listen to me and you know your diets what can you do now think of one item that you'd like to change about your diet that would lead you closer to a mediterranean diet you're not going to revamp your diet in a night but maybe you could do one thing you could try a little bit closer so that's it you