foreign Bill Bradley registered dietitian here today we are going to talk about the authentic Mediterranean diet now when I first became a dietitian I worked in a hospital worked with people with heart disease and I learned about the Mediterranean diet and I learned more about it in blog posts and cookbooks and other books and then I went to the Mediterranean to the Greek island of Crete I went there because they're known to be the healthiest people in the world and what I discovered was what I thought was the authentic Mediterranean diet was not and today
we're going to talk about what the real traditional Mediterranean diet is while I cook a meal for my daughter and my wife foreign to the island of Crete the very first meal I had there I went to a restaurant that said traditional breakfast of Crete and I walked in and I said could I have that traditional breakfast of Crete please and it turned out to be this like super gooey cheesy very like sugary cheese danish basically is what it was and I was like is that the traditional diet of Creek so what I did was
I went into the villages and I started to talk to the older people and talk to them about how they were actually eating and this is where I started to learn what the real true Mediterranean diet was and the first thing I learned was that this diet is a super high fat diet you'll hear in the U.S that the Mediterranean diet is high fat and you'll look in a cookbook and it'll a recipe might say two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil the recipe we're going to make today horta greens and potatoes it has a
cup of extra virgin olive oil in it the woman that I wrote Our cookbook foods of Crete traditional recipes from the healthiest people in the world with she went into the villages and interviewed people that were in their 90s and there was one man that was at least he was claiming that he was eating a cup of extra virgin olive oil at every meal and so it is a very high fat diet yet people are thin and they have very low rates of heart disease the next thing I learned about the true authentic Mediterranean diet
look at this this is the amount of vegetables that we're going to use to make dinner tonight and this is normal typically in the Mediterranean they eat 9 to 15 servings of fruits and vegetables in a day that's a lot of fruits and vegetables and it's cooked in a lot of extra virgin olive oil so it tastes amazing so if you think you don't like fruits and vegetables try it cooked this way and I think you'll find that you really really like them so we're going to start making the horta with potatoes and the Greek
salad and I'm going to tell you more another thing I want to point out are these so so many people are always asking me they don't have potatoes in the Mediterranean diet do they yes they do they eat potatoes a lot they eat potatoes they even have french fried potatoes except they fry it in extra virgin olive oil and guess what else they eat bread so there's a lot of misperceptions that they don't eat bread in the Mediterranean but of course Italian Greek they eat bread all the time that went well and it's very traditional
it's sourdough bread it's usually a more of a whole grain but they still eat bread they also eat pasta they eat rice so the other misperception is that people think that the Mediterranean diet is a low carb diet but it isn't it's a high carb high fat diet I'm just chicken is misperceptions a word of Christmas versus misconceptions on this perception is a wrong or incorrect understanding or interpretation one of the other uh misperceptions about the Mediterranean diet is that it's very expensive what is interesting about it is that the Mediterranean diet the true authentic
Mediterranean diet was actually the diet of people that didn't have a lot of money it was a peasant diet of The Villages and people that lived off the land so yes they didn't have a lot of money and the irony is that if you're going to eat this way in the United States it is food that's more expensive organic vegetables grass-fed meat extra virgin olive oil the thing is is that there are ways to make it less expensive first of all they eat less meat and more vegetables they eat more beans which are a lot
cheaper and they also eat a good amount of pasta and rice and bread which are also lower in cost and you can check out our other Mediterranean diet on a budget videos to learn about how to eat Mediterranean diet for Less another misperception about the Mediterranean diet is people think that you only can get the health benefits of eating the Mediterranean diet if you're actually in the Mediterranean and this has been disproven many times Studies have shown that people in the United States and Australia all all over the world they eat the Mediterranean diet have
all the health benefits of if you were eating it in the Mediterranean like lower heart disease diabetes lower rates of cancer really just about everything you can think of including Alzheimer's dementia less amounts of arthritic pain inflammation so no matter where you are in the world you can eat the Mediterranean diet and still get the benefits of it the last thing I want to talk about with the authentic Mediterranean diet is alcohol now a lot of people get very excited because they think of people drinking lots of wine and moonshine in the Mediterranean diet and
it is true in the places that are most researched where such as Italy Spain and Greece they do tend to have alcohol pretty much from the time their kids until their last breath and whether it's actually part of what makes you live longer that's questionable so it is very controversial alcohol some people say you should drink it small amounts with your meals it can increase your good cholesterol other people not so good can affect your brain in a bad way it can increase risk of breast cancer in women and so I'm going to leave that
one up to you but in authentic Mediterranean diet some people drink alcohol and some people don't okay let's eat so we have our meal the bread the Horton potatoes and the salad and one of the things that is uh important to see here is we don't have any meat chicken fish or beans we do have protein in the cheese but that's sometimes happens in the authentic Mediterranean diet sometimes there is meat chicken fish and beans and sometimes there's not so here we go wait a minute I forgot to introduce you guys this is my wife
Christine hi and this is my daughter Sophia can you say hi okay so Sophia do you want to do your song let's hold hands and do yourself of course a bunch for the Porto with potatoes and the Greek salad and the bread too much thank you baby by lunch thanks yay dirt you made my lunch okay that's it authentic Mediterranean dinner see you next time
