PRELIMINARIES

The Mediterranean diet is healthier than the diets of the affluent societies of the West. On this nutritionists and pathologists are in agreement. A writer for The Times (of 31.8.93), under the banner headline ‘Switch to Mediterranean diet “can cut heart risk” ’, cites papers to a congress in Nice, a study on diet conducted at Lyon, and a consultant physician at Leicester Royal Infirmary, described as ‘author of the latest study’. Mediterranean peoples have a lower incidence of heart disease, cancer and digestive disorders, and this can be attributed directly to diet and life-style in general. In the Mediterranean region (according to a survey conducted in South Italy in the 1960s) a high proportion of total energy is provided by cereals (more than 60%); a low proportion of total energy comes from lipids, that is, fats (less than 30%); a high contribution is made to total lipids from olive oil, so that the diet is low in saturated fatty acids; and there is a relatively high intake of fruit and vegetables, providing at least half the dietary fibre that is ingested. Then, nutritionists talk of the presence in plant foods of various non-nutrients with a health-protective function that are only beginning to be understood. All this favourable publicity for the Mediterranean diet has served only to bolster the assumption already harboured by students of antiquity, that the ancient inhabitants of the region were well-off in terms of food and health.

Diet in the Mediterranean has not remained static. There have been intrusions, notably maize, potatoes, tomatoes, sugar from the New World.