Med Diet More Effective in Obesity Prevention than Other Diets, Study Finds

An exten­sive review of aca­d­e­mic research has shed new light on the Mediterranean diet’s sig­nif­i­cant role in pre­vent­ing obe­sity.

According to the authors of a study pub­lished in Experimental Gerontology, a sig­nif­i­cant body of tri­als, obser­va­tional stud­ies and meta-analy­ses showed a greater reduc­tion of body weight and body mass index (BMI) com­pared to the results obtained through the adop­tion of other diets.

The researchers believe that other dietary guide­lines might neglect some of the most impact­ful char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Mediterranean diet.

“Most of the time, when we talk about nutri­tion and dietary habits, we tend to focus on very spe­cific aspects, such as the calo­ries found in a spe­cific food,” Ligia J. Dominguez, a pro­fes­sor at the University of Enna’s fac­ulty of med­i­cine and surgery, and co-author of the study, told Olive Oil Times.

“The Mediterranean diet teaches us that there is so much more to a healthy diet than the con­tents of food,” she added. ​“The Mediterranean diet entails not only food but also a Mediterranean lifestyle.”

“One of its main aspects is social­ity, which is a cru­cial part of the Mediterranean diet,” Dominguez con­tin­ued. ​“It means eat­ing together, cook­ing together and adding a strong social con­text to the meal itself, which also might trans­late into eat­ing less and choos­ing qual­ity food.”

According to the researcher, stud­ies show how phys­i­cal activ­ity asso­ci­ated with the Mediterranean diet and the social aspects of eat­ing adds a layer of pos­i­tiv­ity that has a sig­nif­i­cant impact on patients.

“A Mediterranean lifestyle rep­re­sents a multi-dimen­sional approach, an anti­dote to many of the most com­mon trig­gers of eat­ing com­pul­sions, such as emo­tional voids or spe­cific patholo­gies,” Dominguez said.

“Having said this, inves­ti­gat­ing fats, salt, calo­ries and the many other food con­tents is, of course, essen­tial for under­stand­ing nutri­tion,” she added. ​“Based on such inves­ti­ga­tions, dietary guide­lines world­wide have sug­gested and still pro­pose low-fat diets, as such diets reduce fat con­sump­tion, which is rich in calo­ries.”

“Decades after imple­ment­ing such guide­lines, though, there is no sign that the obe­sity pan­demic is being cur­tailed,” Dominguez con­tin­ued.

According to the World Health Organization, more than one bil­lion peo­ple are obese, a three-fold increase in the last 40 years.

In 2016, about 13 per­cent of the adult pop­u­la­tion in the world was obese, a con­di­tion asso­ci­ated with many dis­eases. Obesity is con­sid­ered one of the most rel­e­vant global pub­lic health prob­lems.

“This trend should tell us that guide­lines based on low-fat diets do not work,” Dominguez said. ​“People around the world are not show­ing any com­pli­ance with such rigid rec­om­men­da­tions.”

“Be it a low-fat diet or a diet which excludes car­bo­hy­drates, most peo­ple who try to fol­low such harsh dietary regimes are found to drop out after a brief period of time,” she added.

According to Dominguez, when diet results are con­sid­ered over an extended period, stud­ies show how the dif­fer­ences between low-fat and low-car­bo­hy­drate diets nar­row con­sid­er­ably.

After ini­tial suc­cess in weight loss, most patients of such dietary regimes return to pre­vi­ous dietary habits.

“Sometimes they even fall vic­tim to the rebound effect when drop­ping out of a diet regime, end­ing up eat­ing way more than they used to,” Dominguez said.

“Trials and long-term stud­ies have shown that the per­cent­age of patients drop­ping out of low-fat and low-car­bo­hy­drate diets is sim­i­lar,” she added.

Studies show that a dif­fer­ent approach might yield dif­fer­ent results.

“A healthy nutri­tion pat­tern which is also tasty and based on fresh pro­duce strictly con­nected to the local area, such as the Mediterranean diet, is way more appeal­ing for peo­ple,” Dominguez said.

According to the researcher, one of the rea­sons many nutri­tion­ists might have neglected the Mediterranean diet is due to its unreg­u­lated fat con­tent.

“Most dietary rec­om­men­da­tions around the world fix the max­i­mum accept­able amount of calo­ries as fat at about 30 per­cent,” Dominguez said. ​“The Mediterranean diet sits between 35 and 45 per­cent.”

She indi­cated that this higher per­cent­age of rec­om­mended fat con­sump­tion has likely impacted the global uptake of the Mediterranean diet for los­ing weight.

“Still, all the stud­ies we researched – meta-analy­ses, ran­dom­ized tri­als, or even obser­va­tional stud­ies – all assess that the Mediterranean diet does not pro­voke any weight gain,” Dominguez said.

“What is more, all of those stud­ies show that peo­ple adher­ing to the Mediterranean diet tend to lose weight over a long period of time,” she added. ​“Furthermore, they show that adher­ing to the Mediterranean diet usu­ally pre­vents some­one from becom­ing over­weight or obese.”

As a result, Dominguez believes it is more impor­tant to focus on what types of fat are con­sumed in a diet rather than how much fat is con­sumed.

“Not all fats are equal,” Dominguez said. ​“Extra vir­gin olive oil and its unique prop­er­ties play a key role, as it has a highly ben­e­fi­cial impact thanks to the monoun­sat­u­rated oleic acid and other key con­tents such as polyphe­nols.”

However, she added that aware­ness of the health impacts of dif­fer­ent types of fats is increas­ing in the nutri­tion and weight loss fields.

“Increasingly, the focus is shift­ing from the goal of quick weight loss to the idea of estab­lish­ing a healthy nutri­tion pat­tern where weight loss can hap­pen across a longer period of time,” Dominguez said.

“Still, the key for the suc­cess of such an inno­v­a­tive approach proved to be propos­ing a more inter­est­ing and sat­is­fy­ing dietary pat­tern to patients, des­tined to fos­ter dietary com­pli­ance and carry results,” she con­cluded.