The Mediterranean Diet: The New Gold Standard?

Forbes ^ | 2/25/2013 | Larry Husten

[neverdem]

Comment Now Follow Comments Earlier today I summarized the important new PREDIMED study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showing the cardiovascular benefits of the Mediterranean diet. This study– a rare and much welcome instance of a large randomized controlled study of a diet powered to reach conclusions about important cardiovascular endpoints– has been widely praised and will undoubtedly have a major effect in the field of nutrition and will influence lots of people to adopt some form of a Mediterranean diet.

The study’s major potential weakness appears to be that the control group didn’t get a fair chance. Here’s how the authors describe the control group:

Participants in the control group… received dietary training at the baseline visit and completed the 14-item dietary screener used to assess baseline adherence to the Mediterranean diet. Thereafter, during the first 3 years of the trial, they received a leaflet explaining the low-fat diet (Table S2 in the Supplementary Appendix) on a yearly basis. However, the realization that the more infrequent visit schedule and less intense support for the control group might be limitations of the trial prompted us to amend the protocol in October 2006. Thereafter, participants assigned to the control diet received personalized advice and were invited to group sessions with the same frequency and intensity as those in the Mediterranean-diet groups, with the use of a separate 9-item dietary screener (Table S3 in the Supplementary Appendix)...

[Mase]

You may know where your milk comes from but you have no clue as to what’s in it — unless you have a high powered microscope and an advanced education in microbiology. Otherwise, you’re playing Russian roulette with your health. But hey, it’s your right to guzzle dangerous pathogens as you see fit. Good luck with that.