Doubts are being raised over whether diet is a panacea, writes Haydn Shaughnessy
When Julius Caesar entered, fought and won victories in foreign countries he had the habit of announcing: Veni, Vidi, Vici - I came, I saw, I conquered. The history books do not record what he said next, but there is a good chance it would have been: Centurion, pass the orange juice. For here was a warrior nation that cut a swathe through Europe on a stomach of fruit, fennel, baby spinach and an olive oil vinaigrette.
This plant-focused diet spawned the two most powerful and cultured empires in European history, for the Greeks invaded Italy and passed on their eating priorities to the vanquished Sicilians, the little fellars whose metre-long strides took them across the continent.
Could there be any more dramatic endorsement?
Two thousand years later, cardiologists, nutritionists and dieticians see the Mediterranean diet as the silver bullet that prevents degenerative disease. But doubts are creeping in. Some of the largest and most influential health bodies still reserve judgment. And new research seems to support their scepticism.
The debate, like so many, is at its most intense in mortality-obsessed America.
Oldways is a US organisation whose mission is to promote traditional American ways of eating.
Strangely, Oldways, guardian of US traditions, has become a passionate advocate of the Mediterranean diet, and now organises trips to holiday spots where diet-challenged Americans can live the Mediterranean culinary dream.
"The Mediterranean diet is considered by the leading scientists throughout the world to be the gold standard in disease prevention and the key to the best quality of life," says Oldways.
Experts in Europe generally agree.
In 1997, an EU expert committee endorsed not just the Mediterranean diet but specifically olive oil as the key to improved health.
Despite calls from pressure groups like Oldways and public health researchers, the American Heart Association (AHA) has steadfastly resisted a full endorsement.
However, the AHA was forced to concede that a Mediterranean diet could help prevent a second heart attack for people who have already suffered their first after a Harvard University study of 22,000 Greeks found strong evidence that the Mediterranean diet lowered mortality.
But, as it points out on its website, there are many types of diet in the Mediterranean.
Some 16 countries border the Mediterranean's calm blue waters. Many of these have significant meat (or saturated fat) consumption. And the Mediterranean is essentially a high-fat diet, comprising up to 45 per cent of calories from fats, whereas the thrust of health policy across the western world has been to reduce dietary fat. The European and US dietary target is to reduce calories from fat to around 30 per cent of the total.
The miracle life of the Mediterranean diet began with the publication of groundbreaking research in 1970. This research became known as the Seven-Country Study. It was a US-led initiative, the first large-scale comparative dietary study in history, and the first to highlight what have since become commonplace paradoxes.
For example, if you believe the Mediterranean diet is a lifesaver, it's more than a little paradoxical that the French eat plenty of rich food but suffer fewer heart attacks than north Europeans.
The Mediterranean diet seemed to hold the clue to good health, despite these paradoxes. Much dietary research since has been designed to explain the apparently inexplicable elements of the Seven-Country Study. Hence, periodically new research emerges on the link between wine, French eating habits and heart disease.
In the meantime, the Mediterranean diet has become big business.
Olive oil was singled out early on as the major health provider (though the Harvard study rejects the idea that any one element in the Mediterranean diet is critical). As a consequence. Spain now has 2.4 million hectares of olive oil under production, while Italy has 1.4 million, and Greece has 1 million.
By the late 1990s, subsidies to all EU olive oil producers cost the European Union more than €2 billion a year. That production bonus led to highly intensive, near mono-variety production and considerable desertification, which the EU is now spending money on reversing. EU subsidies make up twice the total value of all global olive oil trade. It is, in short, unsustainable.
And it incurs the wrath of the American edible oil industry that wants to promote the health benefits of corn, canola and particularly soy oils - all products backed by the large US health-agribusiness companies. Olive oil manufacture in the US is a cottage industry.
The International Olive Oil Council (IOOC), based in Madrid, is one of the major sponsors of research into the health benefits of olive oil (as is the EU, which runs an Olive Oil Medical Information website), and a major promoter of the link between olive oil and health. The IOOC regulates the olive oil industry through most of the world - except the US.
Olive oil is undoubtedly beneficial but as the association and its members, trouserful of subsidy, stimulate further demand, and as the benefits of the product grow in the public imagination, the product itself is leading to serious agricultural deterioration with obvious implications for the quality of the product.
The more we buy, the less value it has. And global overproduction is now a problem.
While Europe and America slug it out over edible oils, and produce global excess, the developing world is gearing up to promote an alternative. Let's hear it for the Asian Pacific Coconut Community. They too have oil to sell, and it is coming soon in a health campaign near you.
The Med: on a plate
The International Task Force for Prevention of Coronary Disease defined the Med diet as: The traditional (European) Mediterranean diet is characterised by an abundance of plant foods such as bread, pasta, vegetables, salad, legumes, fruit, nuts; olive oil as the principal source of fat; low to moderate amounts of fish, poultry, dairy products and eggs; only little amounts of red meat; low to moderate amounts of wine, normally consumed with meals.
This diet is low in saturated fatty acids, rich in carbohydrate and fibre, and has a high content of monounsaturated fatty acids. These are primarily derived from olive oil.
The EU now claims southern Italy and Crete are the two areas that define the typical Mediterranean diet. Some 25 per cent of Italian children however are now overweight; 36 per cent in the six to 10 year age group.
Haydn Shaughnessy is a journalist and part-time chef