If you don’t know about the Mediterranean diet this is it in short. It’s a modern and nutritional diet based on the use of traditional foods from southern Italy, Greece and Spain. According to proponents of the diet, adding high content of olive oils, vegetables, fruits and even wine to your daily consumption helps to fight heart disease.

In order to see just how this diet could help, Dr. Ramón Estruch – a member from the Departement of Internal Medicine at a Clinic in Barcelona – compared the Mediterranean diet to a low-fat diet.

One group of participants were assigned to the Mediterranean diet but were given the instruction to have at least four table spoons of extra-virgin olive oil everyday. The next group had to consume once ounce of a combination of nuts and had to eat a ounce a day. After following the group for nearly five years the process was stopped. The test group that consumed extra-virgin olive oil showed a 30% lower risk of having a heart attack, stroke or dying of heart disease after five years and the diet high in nuts showed a 28% lower risk of these results.

But the Mediterranean diet study does leave room for argument. The low-fat diet testing group was not given as much attention, whereas the Mediterranean diet test group enjoyed regular dietary direction.

Estruch States:

We think the strength of this study comes from the fact that we measured hard outcomes and not just blood pressure or changes in cholesterol levels,” says Estruch. “We really believe the Mediterranean diet lowers incidence of [heart attack], stroke and cardiovascular deaths.”

[Source: Wikipedia, Time, NYtimes]