Dr. Aravanis was informed by colleagues in New York that a new epidemiologic research, looking at the connection between nutrition and heart diseases, had been started in Minnesota by Ansel Keys. "Keys had indeed started the research in 1947 on a first group consisting of railway workers. I met him in 1954 in Washington on the occasion of the second World Congress of Cardiology. He was a gentle, very polite and intelligent person, with humor. I explained to him the situation in Greece, even though he was informed to a certain degree by colleagues in Italy. We met again one year later at a congress of the American Medical Company in Chicago, where he agreed to include Greece in his research, since he found certain nutritional characteristics that were of interest. He also included Italy, Netherlands, former Yugoslavia - now Serbia, Finland, Japan."
The selection of the sample in Greece was done with the following criteria: the areas had to be far from the centre, so that there would be no influence for the way of life in the centre - even though Athens back then had a profile which with today's standards would be considered a village. "Even though the way of life and nutrition of the rural Greeks were about the same all over the country, we decided to go to the most distant region, the island of Crete. It was already well known that the nutrition in Crete was the typical nutrition of rural people with a high consumption of olive oil combined with hard rural work, physical exercise on a daily basis. The daily calorie intake of the Cretans was not big compared to their work. Their nutrition contained a lot of fat, but talking about fat, we mean olive oil."
Finally, a rural area about 50 km outside Heraklion was chosen, named Kastelli Pediadas. The sample consisted of 620 men in Crete and a year later the study was extended to Corfu - to a region 45 km outside the town of Corfu - where the same number of men was added to the sample. "The second year one of the Ionian Islands was selected, because it was thought that since this area was not conquered by the Turks and came very early into contact with Europe, there might be differences in some habits." However, it proved that the people of Corfu did not show any differences in habits concerning nutrition or exercise compared to the other rural populations. Since then the 1250 men in total underwent an annual check-up that recorded any illnesses and a five-year total check-up.
One of the conclusions of this study - especially were the Cretan sample was concerned, since the Cretans were the most consistent in their check-ups over the years - was that the way of life of the Cretan people is an important factor of longevity. From the 620 men from Crete, the 154 were still alive until last year. It became clear that the people of Crete had the lowest percentage of illness and mortality from cardiovascular diseases compared to the other countries. The differences were thus that everybody talked about the "Crete phenomenon". This phenomenon was attributed to the nutrition and the more general way of life.
The results of the study
The Seven Countries Study offered the scientific community - and others - a famous term - that of the "Mediterranean Diet" - which became the most popular term to be used where nutrition is concerned. This happened because the Mediterranean diet actually had an objective value.
This diet may contain a high quantity of fat, but the fat comes from olive oil, which is known for its special characteristics: it does not increase the cholesterol levels, it has antioxidant attributes due to its high content in vitamin E. Moreover the diet includes fruit and vegetables, high in fiber, and minimal consumption of red meat and milk products. Red wine is also consumed in small quantities. The second "secret" for the longevity of the Mediterranean people and especially the Cretans is hard exercise. "The calories these hard working people burned daily were about 2500 - 2800. This is why their subcutaneous fat index was low compared to the people from other countries that were studied."
As the Seven Countries study showed, the existence of only one of all the basic risk factors for developing coronary heart disease - hypertension, high cholesterol, obesity, smoking, physical inactivity, diabetes - does not affect our health that much. "The combination or else the "mafia of factors" does real harm, even when one of them exists on a limited scale. Some combinations are even more harmful than others. For instance, lipoprotein (cholesterol) disturbances combined with smoking, is very bad for the heart. The worst combination of all seems to be high cholesterol - smoking - hypertension", says dr. Aravanis.
The conclusions of this long-lasting research are far from optimistic. The world is freed from the big epidemics of the past such as the plague or diphtheria, but these have been replaced by new large-scale "epidemics" of non-contagious diseases. Cardiovascular diseases are today the no. 1 death cause in the world. These diseases were unknown in Greece in the past, but today they are one of the biggest health threats for the Greeks. "Despite the progress in research and treatment of heart and vascular disease, they keep appearing increasingly both on a worldwide scale and in our country. Intervening cardiology may have offered many solutions - in many cases it has saved lives - the biggest challenge we face today is to avoid needing surgery. We need to eliminate heart problems, which today are the biggest health threat of the modern world", dr. Aravanis concludes. These words come from a man who has been studying for years now, the heart diseases among the Greek people, and need to further comment.
Nutrition style - Life style
The traditional Mediterranean Diet has the following aspects:
• High dietary fiber intake (fruit, vegetables, bread/cereals, potatoes, pulses)
• Minimum of processed foods,
• Milk products (mostly cheese and yoghurt) every day in small to medium quantities,
• Fish and poultry in small to medium quantities,
• Red meat in small quantities,
• Olive oil as main source of fat,
• Physical exercise on a daily basis,
The Mediterranean Diet pyramid is a descriptive model of these aspects:
The nutrition style of Greeks today
Three out of four Greeks are either obese or overweight, resulting in Greece being on top of the list as the country with the highest average body mass index (BMI) and with the highest percentage of overweight and obese people in Europe.
Josef Schmidhuber, senior economist at FAO, stated that the last 45 years the famous nutrition based on the consumption of abundant fresh fruit, vegetables, cereals and olive oil, has been abandoned in Greece. According to Schmidhuber the people along the Mediterranean spend most of the money they earn on adding calories coming from meat and fat to their nutrition, which traditionally was low in animal proteins.
Research has shown that in the 40 years prior to 2002, the daily calorie intake in 15 European countries increased from 2960 to 3340, an increase of 20%. However, in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Malta the increase was 30%. According to Schmidhuber, the change in nutritional habits does not only come from an increase in income, but also from the increase in the number of super markets and also from the fact that working women spend less time cooking, resulting in families eating out more often.
Josef Schmidhuber mentions that the Mediterranean people continue to consume more fruit, vegetables and olive oil, but that they do not observe the nutrition habits of their ancestors.
Agrino and the Mediterranean Diet
Rice and pulses are foods that should be consumed on a daily basis, since they can be found at the basis of the food pyramid.
Agrino uses her products to promote the traditional Mediterranean diet, offering Mediterranean recipes to her consumers, both on the packages as on the site.
In the spring of 2008 Agrino organized a series of unique events with the Giant-Elephant Beans of Kastoria as the central theme, within the context of the Mediterranean Diet. The cause for these events was the publishing of the children's book "Karpos and the first Giants", which was created by Agrino in cooperation with the publisher "Papadopoulos". The writer of the book is the well known Greek children's book writer Manos Kontoleon.
The events took place both in a book store in Athens as in Kastoria, the birth place of the Giant Bean.
Let's keep in mind that the Mediterranean diet does not only concern the way we eat, but also the way we live!
