The Adherence of the Diet to Mediterranean Principle and Its Impacts on Human and Environmental Health

Abstract

The Mediterranean Adequacy Index (MAI) trends from 1961to 2007, for 48 countries pooled in 4 clusters according to their geographical location (Mediterranean European (ME) countries, Other Mediterranean (OM) countries, Northern European (NE) countries, Eastern European (EE) countries), has been analysed. In almost all the countries the adherence to Mediterranean diet is decreasing from 1961up to 2007, even if with different trend linked to the geographical and cultural characteristic of the clusters (respectively -56% for European Mediterranean and -21 for non-European Mediterranean). The cluster more adherent to healthy Mediterranean diet principles is the OM one, where the incidence of colorectal cancer is shown to be around 50% lower respect to the incidence in ME countries, and around 60% lower respect to the incidence in EE and NE countries. A significant relationship was observed between colorectal cancer incidence and animal protein consumption. On the other hand, vegetable protein intake is suggested to be slightly protective against colorectal cancer incidence. The ecological footprint of food production is higher in ME and NE than in OM and EE countries, even if it is generally higher than the biocapacity. In the 70% of the analysed countries water consumption for food production exceeds the total water exploitable, with an increasing trend from 1961 to 2007. An increase of 1 unit of MAI can decrease the ecological, carbon and water footprint (around 20-25%), in dependence on the initial level of MAI. Due to the environmental and health beneficial effects, the Mediterranean diet can be promoted as a win-win diet system.