Nowadays there is  a popular book that explores the reasons why ‘French women don’t get fat’. It’s certainly not due to lack of eating delicious food! The same refers to the Mediterranean diet – the traditional food that is prepared and eaten around the Mediterranean region of Europe. Although, people there may not be model-skinny, but there you can hardly meet seriously overweight people who enjoy living the traditional lifestyle and eating Mediterranean food peculiar to this area. This phenomenon is explained by great taste of natural food.

Forget what you think you know about Italian cuisine, for a start – yes, pizza and pasta do add extra pounds to the figure in some regions of Italy, but not in the Mediterranean one as people, who live in immediate proximity to the sea, subsist on what they can catch from it and grow in their gardens. As a result they get natural, delicious food that is a pleasure to prepare and an even greater pleasure to eat.

If we consider tomatoes, for example, it goes without saying that tomatoes grown under the Mediterranean sun are much better than any tomatoes we might find elsewhere in the world. The Mediterranean basin is the home of the tomatoes, and the place where they grow best. But that’s just the beginning. There are a variety of other vegetables that the Mediterranean kitchen abounds with, and many of them happen to be dark green, red or orange in color. Believe it or not, that does matter – quite a bit, in fact.

Studies have shown that dark green, red and orange vegetables have a higher concentration of anti-oxidants, making them powerful cancer fighters. Moreover, they tend to be more flavorful and satisfying than many other vegetables – especially when prepared according to the Mediterranean recipes – and that means that you are more likely to fill up on vegetables. As a result, it is one of the best things you can possibly do for maximum weight loss.

Meat is part of the diet, but it’s served rather sparingly. Fish is much more common, given that the Mediterranean life is oriented around the sea. Fish are usually grilled, or served as a course dish with a lot of vegetables. Forget the batter-covered English style fish and chips, though – Europeans living in the Mediterranean regions have much better things to do with the fish with greatly superior results than their countrymen in their home lands! Fish is often quite low in fat is considered to be one of the best protein sources. Even when the fat content is a little higher, however, don’t worry – fat that comes from fish is ‘good’ fat, that is healthy for your heart and bones.

Speaking of ‘good’ fats, you can’t get much better than olive oil for cooking, drizzling on salads, or as a condiment of sorts. Olive oil has none of the harmful effects that some oils have when they are heated – it’s a good, clean oil that adds flavor, and if you’re using good quality olive oil, a little goes a long way! Try to buy cold pressed extra virgin olive oil from Italy, Greece or Spain, or maybe from a less known olive oil producer such as Croatia or Albania. In all of these countries, olive groves that are sometimes up to a thousand years old continue to produce olives for eating and oil production. Olives and olive oil are as much a part of the culture as any other aspect of Mediterranean cuisine.

As you can see, the Mediterranean diet is not necessarily a low calorie one, though it certainly can be – you can adjust the calorie content without sacrificing taste, because natural ingredients make up so much of the diet. If you are interested in eating healthily but not necessarily in losing weight, you can add in some of the ‘extras’ – red wine, some cheese and home baked bread, or the occasional dessert. Even without those extras, though, the Mediterranean diet is easy to follow and stick to because it simply tastes great.

Assuming that you  are not living in a Mediterranean country (in which case you would probably be eating like this already), find a quality source of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables in your community. Try to find Greek or Italian grocery store, too, for more obscure ingredients. The Mediterranean diet is a good eating for life, as well as being relatively easy and fun to follow.

Source: weight loss help

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 3:46 am and is filed under diet, lose weight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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