NEW YORK, JANUARY 6 – The ‘New York Times’ takes sides: the Mediterranean diet is good and it’s good for you. Since the 1950s, when a study was conducted in seven countries on the relationship between diet and cardiovascular disease and it was found that those who lived in the Mediterranean area – in countries such as Italy, Croatia and Greece – were less at risk, the Mediterranean diet has become the foundation of heart-healthy eating, with well-studied health benefits, including reducing blood pressure and cholesterol and the risk of type 2 diabetes, writes the influential American newspaper.
“It’s one of a small number of diets that has research to back it up,” said Dr. Sean Heffron, a preventive cardiologist at NYU Langone Health: “It isn’t a diet that was cooked up in the mind of some person to generate money. It’s something that was developed over time, by millions of people, because it actually tastes good. And it just happens to be healthy.”
To read the ‘New York Times’ article on the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, click here.
The Mediterranean diet is at the center of the Italian agenda at the UN both in Rome and in New York. Last November, the Italian Mission to the UN organized an event on the occasion of the Week of Italian Cuisine in the World together with UNESCO, the Future Food Institute, the municipality of Pollica, the Centro Studi Dieta Mediterranea ‘Angelo Vassallo’ and the Permanent Mission of Morocco with the support of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry. Moderated by Sara Roversi of the Future Food Institute, the event took place in the year of the Italian coordination (through the Municipality of Pollica) of the UNESCO network of Mediterranean Diet Emblematic Communities. (@OnuItalia)
