The Mediterranean Diet - Past and Present.
No two people or patients are alike
While in Italy, I had the opportunity to tour the Academy of Integrative Medicine in Roma, Italy which is affiliated with ippocrate org.
While there, Malone News interviewed Doctor and pharmacologist Maria Grazia Spalluto about the Mediterranean diet and Italy. She is very clear that the Italian diet that is promoted as healthy is anything but. The healthy diet that Italians used to follow was based on famine, work, and greens.
In contrast, the foundation for the current Italian diet has become the three “P.s” - pane (bread), pizza, and pasta. And not surprisingly, during the last decades, metabolic disease has become normalized in both adults and children. She asserts that the industrial diet (ultra-processed foods) is making Italian children very sick. She explains:
One of the most essential aspects of integrative medicine is the idea that there is no one solution fits all.
And that is true for diet also. And that, in most cases, food is the best medicine we have.
The Academy of Integrative Medicine writes:
According to Integrated Medicine, each patient is a world in itself. Each has its own biotype, suffers from different disorders, experiences pathology differently, has different genetics, a different lifestyle, and a different psychological attitude.
Tailored nutrition is a fundamental therapeutic tool of Integrated Medicine. Its purpose is to prevent, diagnose, and treat “malnutrition” caused by excess, deficiency, or selective metabolic alterations in individuals at nutritional risk.
In fact, malnutrition acquires important clinical significance in many pathologies, even determining their clinical outcomes.
Food as medicine is a concept we all must take seriously. Tailored nutrition is something we all must strive for. Here are a few tips to do just that.
Eat clean. This means eliminating sugars, processed foods, low-quality, nutritionally deficient foods, and ultra-processed foods is the best way to improve health. Be sure to get enough protein. For me, that means meat.
The gut microbiota undergoes significant changes with age, including reduced diversity and shifts in bacterial populations. These changes can affect protein digestion and amino acid absorption, potentially contributing to reduced muscle protein synthesis. Hence, older adults have a slightly lower efficiency in protein digestion and absorption. Bottom line: as we age, we need more protein.
Older adults also need more micronutrients - as the gut does not absorb micronutrients as well. Hence, eat a variety of greens as well as other vegetables!
Pay attention to your body. What foods give you energy and strength? What foods make you sleepy and sluggish? Are there combinations of foods that don’t work for you? Do some foods result in acne or aches in the body? Consider keeping a notebook.
Children learn their eating habits very early in life. If parents, mentors, and family members don’t instill good eating habits, we are dooming our children to an unhealthy lifestyle.
That means removing desserts from the breakfast, lunch, and dinner tables. Keeping healthy snacks on hand. Packing a school lunch - rather than relying on the “hot” and not-so-healthy school lunches and teaching children the value of not over-indulging. We should keep the television and internet, which are filled with advertisements for unhealthy foods, out of our children's lives as much as possible.
Be sure to read the food labels. Better yet, avoid foods that require a label! A good tip is to try to shop only on the outside aisles of the grocery store.
Also, a sedentary lifestyle is unhealthy. Children must get out and play each and every day. It is essential for them to discover independence through time with other children and to develop strong, healthy bodies.
For us adults, it is never too late to change. Get outside and move your body, and exercise. That exercise can be low impact, like walking or gardening. It doesn’t have to require a gym membership! Also, weighing oneself daily can be that internal voice to do better each day.
Developing healthy habits requires willpower. That means setting clear goals, establishing routines and habits, and managing lifestyle choices.
It also helps to have a partner to share your journey with, whether it be a spouse, friend, coach or group committing to healthy living.
OK- enough lecturing for the day!
As for me, after two days of eating the typical Italian fare, I can’t wait to get home - to our daily routines of meat, veg, and intermittent fasting!
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I love sweets! The last let’s say four years I have figured out they are killing me. At the beginning of figuring this out, off and on I would get a sharing size bag of peanut M&M’s and in my truck I would eat them when driving. They really taste great. My knees and left hip began to have massive pain, but at the beginning I didn’t get it. My hip got so bad in pain I would leave my leg hanging out of my pick up truck and all at once I would pick it up in dyer pain yell and put my leg in the truck. Once I stopped eating the M&M’s my pain subsided. Now I notice if I eat just a little extra sugary processed foods, I love those small pies, (don’t hate me for being honest) maybe and a candy bar my joint pain starts to flair up. I turned 60 last Tuesday and I absolutely can’t eat the way I once did. Sugary foods, chocolate, pies, cakes, etc are my kryptonite!! Did I mention my mother was 100% Italian.
As I have commented on this stack several times, humans are among the most diverse, outbred species on the planet and this has to be considered in all forms of treatment and illness prevention.