Food is medicine, Hippocrates reportedly said: “Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.” We all know this is true yet with all the confusing and seemingly conflicting information out there about diet and nutrition it is hard to know what is right. Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop made the point in his 1988 Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health, that this is the nature of nutrition studies, “they all come out a little different”. When it comes to nutrition you cannot just look at one study, it’s too variable. To understand nutrition you have to look at thousands of studies to see the trends. Fortunately, we don’t have to read them all, it’s already been done many times. Whether it is the Mediterranean, diet, the Okinawan diet, the Chinese diet or a hundred other variations it all comes down to a simple concept called nutrient density.

A nutrient-dense healthy diet is one that pack as much nutrition into the recipes with as few calories as the flavor will allow. The trick really is making the food delicious. This is where diets like the Mediterranean diet can help because good cooks over a long period of time around the Mediterranean sea have applied themselves to creating delicious recipes that have stood the test of time. By exploring the cuisine of Greece, Italy and theMiddle East we can make healthy eating an adventure in culinary alchemy.

Read on and watch the Ted Talk with Dean Ornish

For more on the concept of nutrient density see

Five Element Diet and Nutrient Density

https://www.barefootdoctorsjournal.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=677&action=edit

And here is a link to Harvard Medical School’s Osher Institute for Integrative Medicine Grand Rounds session on the Mediterranean Diet and cardiovascular disease.

Grand Rounds Mediterranean Diet

https://www.barefootdoctorsjournal.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=1118&action=edit