Health benefits of Mediterranean and non-Mediterranean dietary pattern in different cultural contexts

Abstract

Abstract Description of the problem The increasing globalization of diet and dietary habits resulting from the large availability and diversity of food poses new questions for the actual health benefits of different dietary patterns in populations not traditionally exposed to a certain dietary model. Consuming a traditional Mediterranean diet (MD) has been found to be associated with lower mortality/disease risk also in non-Mediterranean populations but it is unclear whether healthful non-Mediterranean (non-MD) diets may reflect protective dietary patterns in Mediterranean populations. Results Data from the Moli-sani Study showed that participants reporting high adherence to the MD or the DASH diet experienced lower risk of both all-cause and CVD death risks. On the other side, risk reduction associated with the Palaeolithic diet was limited to total and other cause death, whereas the Nordic diet did not alter risk of mortality. Increasing adherence to MD was also associated with higher survival in each stratum of non-MD diets, suggesting that a closer high adherence to a traditional MD may counterbalance the weak effects on CVD mortality risk associated with non-MD diets. Similarly, data form the Swedish Mammography Cohort indicated an advantage to be adherent to the MD as compared to a healthy Nordic diet. Conclusions From a public health perspective, these data provide further incentive and support to the efforts aimed to preserving a traditional MD in order to prolong survival among Mediterranean populations, and to reduce CVD mortality risk. Evidence on the health effects deriving from classifying participants in joint exposure strata reflecting the combined adherence to different diets is scarce but more efforts should be made to see whether, at a time of food globalization, healthy dietary patterns are possibly interchangeable among populations.