Mediterranean Green Diet: What to Eat to Keep Your Vessels Young

Keeping the vessels young means keeping them supple. This prevents stiffness, which in turn promotes arteriosclerosis, cardiovascular disease and strokes. Diet plays an important role in this. A “green” Mediterranean diet has a particularly positive effect on the blood vessels. This is shown by the randomized clinical study Direct-Plus with 300 subjects. The analysis appeared in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

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How is the green Mediterranean diet different from traditional Mediterranean food?

The traditional Mediterranean diet means: lots of fresh vegetables and fruit, legumes, high-fiber whole grain products and nuts, little meat, lots of fish and high-quality oils such as olive oil. With the so-called green Mediterranean diet, the motto is: even fewer animals, even more plants. This means that there is even less red or processed meat and a higher proportion of polyphenols, i.e. secondary plant substances, on the menu. Polyphenols are mainly found in vegetables and fruit. They add flavor and, most importantly, color. That’s why: the more colourful, the better for your health.

For example, subjects on the Mediterranean green diet ate 28 grams of walnuts daily and drank three to four cups of green tea and one cup of a green shake made from the Wolffia globosa (mankai) plant daily for a period of eighteen months. This green aquatic plant is considered an ideal meat substitute. It has a high concentration of easily digestible iron, vitamin B12 and more than two hundred types of polyphenols and proteins.

What do healthy blood vessels need polyphenols for?

Polyphenols include flavonoids, anthocyanins and phenolic acids. In the body, they function as a protective shield for the endothelium. These are the cells of the inner wall of the vessel. The fitter and healthier they are, the smoother and younger the vessels are – and the lower the risk of cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks or strokes.

“The polyphenol-rich Mediterranean green diet was first introduced as a concept by the Direct Plus study research team,” lead researcher Iris Shai of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel, told Medscape magazine. The diet achieved a “dramatic reduction in the stiffening of the proximal aorta” in the approximately 300 people with abdominal obesity and dyslipidemia (lipid metabolism disorder), as the examinations in the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed. “To date, it has not been shown that diet can affect the physiology of vascular aging,” explains Shai.

How did the different diet affect the vessels?

For 18 months, the research team recorded the change in diet of the test subjects. The result: not only did the participants lose weight, but all nutrition groups achieved a significant reduction in stiff vessels, viz

• 4.8 percent with the healthy standard diet,
• 7.3 percent with the traditional Mediterranean diet and
• 15 percent with the Green Mediterranean Diet.

The latter therefore achieves the best results for vascular health. Deepak L. Bhatt, director of Mount Sinai Heart in New York City and not involved in the study, told Medscape that the study was of high quality. Because it was carried out randomly, which does not apply to most nutritional studies.

However, the cardiology professor points out the special group of subjects. The results are “quite credible, although of course it would be nice to be able to reproduce the results in a more diverse and larger sample,” says Bhatt.

Nevertheless, his conclusion is: “It is only plausible that a diet with more greens and more polyphenols is also healthier. Some other studies have shown that plant polyphenols may have various protective effects on the cardiovascular system.”

Which food is the best for healthy vessels?

Eating colorful is also recommended by Martin Halle, Medical Director of the Institute for Preventive Sports Medicine and Sports Cardiology at Munich University Hospital. Each meal should include vegetables and fruits of different colors. This guarantees the highest possible amount of different polyphenols. The easiest way is with the traffic light colors green, yellow, red. Example: broccoli and yellow peppers for the main course, possibly a piece of fish (omega-3 fatty acids), for dessert a red apple, berries, depending on the season.

You don’t need any tables to know how many valuable plant substances are in a food. The key is the colour. A banana offers less than an aubergine, which should not be peeled because the polyphenols are in the peel. This is also the reason why apples, pears and similar types of fruit are best eaten with their skin on.