Me: Maam/Sir, are you sure you do not have any ailments?
Patient: No, doctor, Im sure.
Not convinced, I ask the customary question:
Me: Are you on any medication?
Patient: I only take a pill for my diabetes and one for my blood pressure.
It is moments like these that clue me into how much the average Westerner is used to relying on drugs, and to being in constant contact with diseasesso much so that they are considered a part of us. More depressing still, after reprimanding them for neglecting their own health, I often hear: Doctor, if you call these illnesses or I take the pill and Im fine. It is then that I understand that it is not really their fault, but rather societys. Society does not facilitate the spreading of health awareness. Eastern populations, though not as technologically advanced, have an inherent respect for their own bodies. In Japan and India, for example, they live using natural treatment methods for their bodies and minds, which are methods available to all, and that are inculcated in them since childhood. Health education and respect for our own bodies are the really important things in this life. We should consider ourselves lucky that our conscience or spirit, (depending on ones beliefs), came to be in a healthy body. And yet what do we do instead? We destroy our cells with the crap that is offered us every day. Adults, with their food miseducationbut even worse, with their arrogant assumption that they are perfectly able to safeguard their childrens healthconvince their kids that the products they are consuming are the best for keeping in shape. Chocolate and candy are the rewards for children who receive good grades or who do well in class. Holidays, religious or not, are a pretext for preparing lavish meals where the majority of guests, as soon as the guest of honor appears, fling themselves toward laden trays of food that is anything but natural. Sometimes we are so fixated on the food that we forget even to congratulate the honoree. And what kind of a party would it be if it did not end by gorging on sweets?
How the Mediterranean Diet Is Presented
She is the great media starlet, the healthy and historic Mediterranean Diet. On all public TV stations, there are exciting little stages where many professionals, supporters of the Mediterranean Diet, are invited. They all line up against the ill-fated nutritionist who, in accordance with his own work experience, found all of the holes in what is today listed as an Intangible Cultural Heritage element: the Mediterranean Diet. These little panels do nothing but confuse those people who, when in doubt, fall into theoretical Do It Yourself health paths, listening to a variety of canards such as red meat causes tumors, or alkaline diets are miraculous, or carbohydrates constitute the main energy source of cells, or drinking lemon water in the morning cleans the overnight accumulation of mucus out from the intestines, etc. The result? When these people convince themselves to come see me at my office, I have to resolve both the problems created by the hypothetical Mediterranean Diet and those caused by the miraculous alternative theories patients came across online.
As an occupational hazard, in addition to taking a patients medical history and asking in detail about their daily food habits, I tend to observe the food carts of patrons at the supermarket. Over the course of time, a thought has isolated itself in my mind, detached from all that was narrated to me during my study courses and during nighttime channel surfing, and I have come to the conclusion that it is the hypothetical Mediterranean Diet that has created this health crisis in the Western populace. Easy nowI too may be taken for a witch doctor by a couple of professionals who back the Mediterranean Diet, but no matter. The time has come to tell you what a healthy Mediterranean Diet is, and above all, how it came about. In time, you will come to understand how science, because of an affirmation typically inherent to its scientific research, manages to deceive itself and the rest of the population.
They tell us that the Mediterranean Diet is the food regimen that is been followed by the people who bordered the Mediterranean Sea, where the climate allowed many species of plants to grow for thousands of yearsfrom vegetables to cereals and legumes. The great study that led to the discovery of the benefits of the Mediterranean Diet was made by an American researcher by the name of Ancel Keys, who, together with his team, came to Italy and a few other countries adjacent to the Mediterranean to figure out why cardiovascular diseases were almost non-existent in these specific areas. Ancel Keyss team studied how these people ate, and were immediately astonished: the Mediterranean people, who had almost non-existent cardiovascular diseases, consumed lots of fats, primarily via eating dry fruits and most especially extra virgin olive oil. Keys continued his studies and concluded them with what is currently presented to us as the healthiest diet in the world: the Mediterranean Diet. The diet is represented by the famous food pyramid that shows, at the very first and largest bottom step, what people should eat the most, and, alas, consume as their main meals: cereals (wheat, rice, oatmeal, etc.) and fruits and vegetables. Therefore, cereals are recommended for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Yes, you heard that correctly: even after getting home at night, we should apparently be eating our beloved bread, in deference to one theorythe theory of the scalewhich claims that it is quantity which creates health problems. Maybe, I say, but not in this case. What results is an obsessive compulsion (which turns into an actual mania) to weigh everything at all costs, with overly exact and expensive little food scales used to try to avoid an extra milligram of cereal.
As you will see in the following pages, I describe the consumption of carbs at night as a veritable bonanza for diabetes. And if this were not enough, we are even advised to consume the simple sugars found in fruit. But we will go over this in the following chapters. In my opinion, the horror of the diet they pass off as Mediterranean lies in the encouragement of the daily consumption of dairy because they say Mediterranean people consumed it during every meal.
Luckily, Italys extra virgin olive oil is also recommended for daily consumption. On the highest tier of the food pyramid we find meat, shellfish, eggs, legumes and seafood. Eggs, legumes and seafood on the last tier, together with meat? Mediterranean people really only ate fish twice a week? And legumes?
The Mediterranean Diet, in percentages, calls for the total daily calorie intake of carbs to be 55-65% (of which 10% is from simple sugars, thereby encouraging the consumption of glucose and fructose); 25-30% of calories in the form of fats, and the rest, (meaning a max of 15%), from proteins. Proteins are demonized together with fats as being harmful to ones health. That is how you have the whole population flinging itself onto carbs and cereals for years, and glutinous grains in particular, which are anything but healthy. There is usually an argument whenever a patient, under the care of this pseudo Mediterranean Diet, substitutes wheat pasta with buckwheat pasta; he or she is declared reckless and gullible by his or her own physician for daring to consider ordinary pasta, (and white and refined pasta at that), the cause of his or her problems. Yet, just so we understand each other, buckwheat pasta has the same amount of carbs as ordinary pasta but of a different quality, and when you hear the physician whose care you are under for your food regimen, and who often specializes in everything but nutrition, say that a diet without carbs is a health risk, you ask yourself: what do you mean, without carbs? Surely, that physician has never read the nutritional value of buckwheatotherwise he or she would not be making statements lacking any sort of knowledge in nutritional biology. Who is left picking up the bill, then? It is the poor patients who often find themselves almost forced to leave it to fate and flip a coin for advice on the right path to follow. Heads: Ill listen to the potbellied physician who suffers from diabetes. Tails: Ill try this new theory by this fit young physician who has resolved his own health issues simply by consuming specific categories of food.