
saying the Mediterranean diet is good for longevity good for abdominal fat loss good for cardiovascular disease is fine in dandy except there are a lot of countries in the Mediterranean we can't just group it all together I mean Spain is wildly different from Greece which is wildly different from Italy then we've got Sicily we've got Sardinia we've got turkey technically we all these regions of the Mediterranean so we group this all together and say eat the quote unquote Mediterranean diet which I am all for I think there's a lot of benefit there but I want to investigate it more I want to understand which countries have the best Mediterranean diet and what did they eat what makes them different well we can't just cold turkey jump into this and say okay well this country eats this so I like this more we need to look at the data first so this video is going to unpack a large study first to understand which countries have the biggest impact from their diet and then later on we'll look at what that diet consists of so let's go ahead and jump in this first study was published in current opinions in clinical nutrition and metabolic care it was interesting because it looked at a lot of literature and it helped us understand mainly the differences between Italy Greece and Spain when it came down to longevity and whatnot now this was a large review that looked at epidemiological data as well as randomized control trials looking at longevity cardiovascular disease abdominal fat you name it so let's first take a look at Greece now the way that they did this is they looked at their adherence to a Mediterranean diet within that region so basically people that would adhere more or followed more of what they considered the Mediterranean approach within that region they would give a score to so in this particular case it was 0 to 55 someone that was a 55 was following the Mediterranean approach within Greece 100% right someone that was a zero was barely following it at all basically what they found in this particular case was that for every one point that someone adhered to the Mediterranean diet in Greece there was somewhere between a 1 and a 4% Improvement in their longevity or risk of cardiovascular disease in this case obviously it could vary and I'm sure the scale would tilt depending on how much closer you got right bottom line is that's a pretty strong correlation there basically the more they adhere to this diet the better Improvement they had or less risk they had now let's jump over to Italy for a second there were four particular studies uh in this meta analysis with follow-up periods of 50 years 17 years four years and 12 years so they were looking at this over a long period of time in multiple studies same kind of thing the higher the adherence to an Italian Mediterranean diet the lower the risk of mortality no real surprise there but there is a 30 to 40% reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and all cause mortality when there was a higher adherence to the Italian Mediterranean diet so again we don't have enough data to really look at it just yet but it says that okay this is pretty interesting people that follow the Italian Mediterranean diet really end up having a better health outcome cardiovascular disease related wise and Longevity wise now let's look at Spain Spain was interesting because they took a look at a couple of studies and they divided people in the top cortile the top 1/4 of people that consumed closest to the Spanish Mediterranean diet compared to the bottom cortile people that did not really adhere to the Spanish Mediterranean diet all that much there was a 40% reduction in cardiovascular disease in that top quarter and there was a 47% reduction in all cause mortality in that top quarter compared to the bottom quarter so looking at this data right out the G like adherence to the Spanish Mediterranean diet seemed to have the biggest impact right so biggest bang for the buck so if I was adhering to a Spanish Mediterranean I would probably get slightly better impact than if I was adhering to a Greek Mediterranean but that's looking at CBD and mortality let's also look at diabetes and Metabolism for just a moment so in Greece there's a study published in diabetologia that was looking at 22295 people big study they gave a Mediterranean diet score of 1 to 10 10 adhering one not adhering basically people that were a six or above consuming basically 60% Mediterranean or above ended up having a 12% less risk of developing diabetes or insulin resistance than those consuming a three or lower so more adherence less risk of diabetes despite a fair amount of carbohydrates but what's interesting in this particular study is they also looked at a low carb version of it if you took that same exact diet but reduced the carbohydrate intake that risk reduction went from 12% to 20% so clearly the carbs are part of an issue with grease like their diet is good but when you reduce the carbs their diet gets really good anyhow that's neither here nor there let's look at Italy in terms of diabetes and just metabolic Health real quick there was a randomized control trial that looked at 180 subjects with metabolic syndrome okay divided them into two groups one group went on an Italian Mediterranean diet the other group went on a prudent diet so more regular diet macronutrients were roughly the same calories were the same What mattered here was the food they followed them around and two years later did a followup the Mediterranean group lost more weight they also had lower instances of inflammation and insulin resistance as a matter of fact at the end of the 2-year period in the Mediterranean group only 40 people still had clinical metabolic syndrome whereas in the other prudent healthy eating group but not the same kind of foods 78 of them still had clinical metabolic syndrome so what's interesting here is although I'm not a believer in like a naturalistic fallacy where everything that comes from nature is good and y y i i buy into some of it the quality of food here did seem to matter like Mediterranean it's not necessarily just about the calories or the macronutrients in this case it is about the type of food right so that Med metan diet ended up being better okay so yes the Italian Mediterranean diet could be very good now let's look at Spain so this Spanish study took a look at 11,000 people without diabetes or without cardiovascular disease and followed up with them 7 to eight years later after following a Spanish Mediterranean diet the highest adherence to a Mediterranean diet led to a 27% reduction in metabolic syndrome so they had 27% less chance of developing metabolic syndrome over the 7 to8 year period get this though there was also a 37% less instance of abdominal obesity so 37% less chance of getting fat in the abdomen midsection but get this a 67% reduction in mortality over a 7 to eighty year followup the stronger that Spaniards adhered to their Spanish Mediterranean diet there was an even stronger correlation with reduced mortality 6 7% reduced risk okay so we have all the data but now we need to look at what they actually eat let's understand this now again I'm going to say before I get into like what they actually eat Mediterranean is good okay there's a lot of evidence to suggest that Mediterranean but reducing carbohydrate intake along with it is even better because that's probably the one potential problem in a sedentary lifestyle is if Americans start to adopt a Mediterranean lifestyle or Mediterranean diet we're far too sedentary to probably enjoy all the carbage that Europeans and Mediterraneans eat they walk a lot more and move a lot more than we do in America so they can compensate for those calories or not even calories but carbohydrates and glucose much more than we can so it might be a wise idea to say hey let's take what they do and may back off the carbs a little bit I put a link down below for Thrive Market which you can skip over this portion if you want to it's totally fine Thrive Market is a sponsor on my channel they are an online grocery store and they have a whole Mediterranean region like for their grocery shopping so if you want like olive oil if you want more Mediterranean style foods like you can just type in Mediterranean at Thrive market and that is a 30% off discount link so 30% off your entire first grocery order with Thrive Market plus a free $60 gift so load up your grocery cart do your grocery shopping they've got sustainable Meat and seafood they've got packaged food they've got everything they've got sardines they've got all this Mediterranean stuff Stu and it's all in a better for you category meaning no hidden nastiness no dyes no weird preservatives that's what they're all about bringing healthier food to the masses so that link down below check out Thrive market and a big thank you to them for continuing to support this channel after shoot like over half a decade they've been helping us out for a long time so that link again 30% off your whole grocery order in the top line of the description let's look at these diets now so if you look at this graphic that's on the screen right now this is in interesting because this takes a look at Italy Greece and Spain and Chile's thrown in there too because it was kind of from a different context but if you look at Spain you see that they have the highest meat fish and egg consumption out of any of these countries which is interesting and then you look at like say Italy they have a little bit more in the way of the cereals the fruits the veggies things like that but interesting that Spain has the highest fish egg and meat consumption yet they also had the highest impact in terms of health outcome with the most adherence to their diet Spain flat out had a higher risk reduction with better adherence to their diet and the data from large studies shows that yet they're also the ones out of the Mediterranean countries that seem to eat the most meat fish and eggs and contrary to what a lot of people might think Spain and Greece they still eat a fair bit of meat fish and eggs more so than we talk about in America sometimes in America at least in the mainstream media we kind of make it sound like they're almost vegan they're not and I have a lot of Europeans that watch my channel and you know the deal like it's in fact last time I was in Europe I didn't see like a single thing promoting plant-based or vegan and I have no problem with it but it's not like that's the movement or an agenda there they maybe just Eat A Little Less meat than the Americans do but they're certainly not like abstaining from meat and Dairy and fish and eggs anyhow I digress perhaps more of the protein consumption in Spain is leading to better metabolic Health outcomes and possibly better longevity interestingly enough though Spain does seem to have a higher BMI now BMI doesn't necessarily equate from muscle mass so we can't T totally take that to the bank however maybe there's more stuff infiltrating into Spain now and people are becoming less healthy but we can't just say Spain eats more meat fish and eggs and that's why they have the bigger impact first of all backing up all three of these countries we're talking about Spain Italy Greece are all phenomenal and doing great okay we are splitting hairs but I do like to get down to the granular and see what's best so now let's look at Ultra processed food consumption which of these Mediterranean countries are consuming the least Ultra processed food well it looks as though Greece consumes about 5.9% Ultra processed food okay then we have Spain also consuming about 5.9% Italy coming in around 4.1% so Italy seems to have the least Ultra processed food consumption by a fair bound now you compare this to like Belgium or more so like Netherlands and the UK we're talking 20 to 30% talking in America we're talking I don't even want to mention it's ridiculous 45% plus some evidence even suggests more than 50 okay so 4.1% in Italy low processed food and definitely seems as though Italy wasn't far behind Spain in terms of the risk reduction impact from their diet but we also have to factor in what we do know about carbohydrate consumption and maybe there's just a lot more carbohydrates consumed in Italy but we also know that quality of life in Italy seems to be higher too it's one of the best quality of life scores in the European Union altogether but the processed foods don't tell us everything because for example some categories will put meat in processed food now if you look at the types of processed food consumed grease doesn't consume much in the way of like sausage or anything like that as a quote unquote processed food sausage that is technically a processed food even if it's healthy fermented sausage so Greece doesn't show processed food or doesn't show meat or sausage as a processed food in their top five but 20% of their processed food intake comes from crackers and refined bread products and they also have a high amount of margarine consumption so we've got trans fats coming in there so their processed food consumption with meat is wildly different then say Spain coming in at like 9 to 12 9 to 133% of their total alter processed food coming from sausages and meats right so sausages are not bad there's not garbage in a lot of sausage especially in the Mediterranean granted like baloney and stuff like that isn't good so interestingly enough it's like okay Greece is consuming the same amount of processed foods roughly as Spain but Spain's processed foods are less carbase refined garbage and a little bit more in the way of sausages and stuff like that by the way Italy out of that low 4.1% that they're consuming they're already consuming up to 17% of those processed foods as sausages and possibly fermented meats and cured meats technically processed but not bad right so their processed food intake is crazy low so I think we can take some different things from here Italy sets a standard for processed food in my opinion I think that is a model that we could go after like I like their low alra processed food I like that their processed food intake that they do take is almost 20% coming from good quality sausages and things like that so I think if we took that we said that's a great model and then we took a look at say what Spain is doing okay Mediterranean influence still a lot of olive oil still a lot of this but a lot more in the way of the meat the fish the eggs okay taking in that slightly higher Protein that's coming in there and then of course there's elements to grease that are really good too we still have a lot of good healthy fats coming in from there we just might need to reduce the carbohydrate intake and what we've learned from those studies in Greece is that hey the Greek diet is still really really really really good it gets really really really really good if we reduce the carbohydrate intake a little bit out of it mainly because their carbohydrate intake seems to be quite high from the ulcer processed food category so if we were to just take that Greek style and reduce the processed foods in general we might actually make them number one that's what's pretty cool so we learned a little bit from all of this but a Mediterranean approach with slightly more meat fish and eggs seems to be where we want to go as always keep it locked in here on my channel and I'll see you tomorrow