THE WHOLE PLANET DIET

The Mediterranean diet has been popular for decades. But critics say that a more GLOBAL and INCLUSIONARY APPROACH is BETTER-and way MORE DELICIOUS, too.

- ANJALI PRASERTONG

You've no doubt heard about the heart-healthy, disease-fighting, longevity-promoting virtues of the Mediterranean diet.

Health experts love it because it's simple and flexible, unlike complex and restrictive diets like Whole30 and keto. On a Med diet, all you have to do is focus on eating lean proteins (especially seafood and poultry), with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, unsaturated fats, and a little wine if you'd like. Even the name itself conjures images of lazily nibbling olives off a patio table behind a cliffside villa. This isn't a diet-this is a lifestyle.

Except that some dietitians are now criticizing that very image. The Med diet is, and has always been, narrowly defined. And as any glance at a map will tell you, the region extends beyond Greece and Italy-it's a vast swath of land consisting of 22 countries including Tunisia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Syria, and so many more. To exclude those cultures from our definition of the Med diet, even implicitly, discourages the consumption of a wide variety of incredible flavors from a world of cuisines.

So why limit yourself?

THE MED DIET: AN ORIGIN STORY

NO ONE PERSON or brand owns the diet, but one study did conceive it. In 1950, heart disease was the leading cause of death in the U.S. and scientists wanted to know why. After a few years of initial research, they started connecting cardiovascular health to diet. This brought about the 1958 launch of the Seven Countries Study, a massive cross-cultural analysis of how food and lifestyle relate to heart health. Ancel Keys, Ph.D., a physiologist from the University of Minnesota, led the research.