Many people look to traditional diets to stay healthy. Diets like the Mediterranean diet and the Okinawa diet are among the most popular.

History

Traditional diets have been eaten throughout generations by in different regions of the world by different ethnic groups. All of these diets exclude processed food that have become the norm in today’s society. They also have in common the consumption of seafood or organ meats. Both of these are sources of B12.

Benefits

The most research on traditional diets has been done on the Mediterranean diet. This diet was first made studied by Dr. Ancel Keys in 1945. The diet itself didn’t gain popularity until the 1990’s when Dr. Walter Willett re-introduced the diet to the US.

The diet is commonly understood to include lots of fresh vegetables, legumes and fruit and some poultry and seafood. It includes very little red meat and uses olive oil as it’s primary source of fat. While this is what is commonly considered the Mediterranean diet it is not typical to the the entire Mediterranean area. Some of the areas in the Mediterranean include butter and lard as their staple fats.

Okinawans have a long life expectancy. This is what has made their diet so popular. The diet consists of lots of vegetables, fruit, legumes and rice. They eat seafood  and soy as their primary protein sources.

One of the things that really effects the life expectancy of Okinawans in my opinion is that they don’t overeat and they don’t eat processed foods.

People who eat both of these diets have low incidents of heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and other diseases associated with aging.

The Downside

No more processed foods. If you love McDonald’s or your addicted to chips following a traditional diet will cut out all those goodies. That’s not really so bad because those things aren’t good for you anyway.

My Two Cents

Following a traditional diet no matter what diet it is has one thing in common–the elimination of processed foods. If you look at all the diets I’ve covered in the past few weeks, the thing that makes them healthy is the elimination of processed foods. Do you see the pattern here? It looks like the best then you can do for your health is cut out processed foods.

As far as following a traditional diet goes, I think the best thing to do is find out were your ancestors come from and start eating the traditional diet of that region. If you’re a bit of a mutt like me, you can just pick a diet and try to stick to it.

I love food from different regions of the world. My diet doesn’t follow any one tradition, instead I miss and match and eat what I think tastes great. Following common sense is what has worked best for me. I don’t eat tons of fat. I’ve cut out processed foods. I eat no refined sugar  (except for the birthday cake I ate the other day). I’ve seen my health improve once I started using this common sense approach to eating.

If you’re in need of some good recipes try checking out MediterrAsian. I love this site. Their recipes are great.

Photo by yomi955

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