Practical Tips for a Balanced Mediterranean Diet

If you are thinking about adopting the Greek Mediterranean diet to enjoy its multiple benefits for your health, you could start by making small changes to your current dietary habits. Here are some useful tips:

• Add vegetables to every meal

Make sure that every main meal is accompanied by an adequate serving of vegetables.

Include fresh season’s vegetables in your daily meal plan. For example, in summer, you could have a plain yet delicious tomato and cucumber salad, which is refreshing and easy to prepare.

Alternatively, add vegetables to dishes like pasta, soups or risotto.

• Use olive oil as your main source of dietary fat

Replace any other oil you use with olive oil (preferably virgin or – even better – extra virgin). You can use olive oil in salads or for cooking.

• Incorporate legumes into your weekly menu planning

Legume-based dishes, like lentil or fasolada (navy bean soup), should be consumed at least twice a week.

Alternatively, you can use legumes in salads, such as a black-eyed bean salad.

• Select whole grain products

Instead of processed products such as white flour, bread, rice or packaged breakfast cereals, buy whole grain products, like whole wheat flour, whole wheat or multi-grain bread, quinoa, oats, and brown or wild rice.

• Increase your weekly fish intake

Try to eat oily fish, like sardines, herring, mackerel or salmon, at least two to three times a week.

• Change the way you think about meat

It’s a good idea to limit your consumption of red meat to once a week. However, if you are one of those people who eat meat almost daily, the transition can be made gradually.

Start with small steps, initially leaving meat out of your diet a few days a week or cutting down on the quantity you eat. For example, meat could accompany vegetable dishes, such as casseroles.

As you get used to eating plant-based foods, even more days couldbecome “vegetarian” days, with or without other animal food sources (cheese, eggs, white meat, fish), so that you end up eating red meat just once a week.

• Avoid buying processed foods

When shopping, avoid buying processed and packaged foods or snacks if you can (e.g. crisps, croissants, biscuits, cakes, crackers, breakfast cereals with sugar, soft drinks), or ready-to-eat meals.

• Pay attention to how you cook

Selecting nutritious foods is an essential part of a healthy diet, yet the way food is prepared is also important. For example, it is a good idea to avoid deep frying. Instead, it is preferable to boil, bake in the oven or sauté foods, as promoted by the Greek Mediterranean diet.