Fertility Diet, part 2
I do not support the Mediterranean diet for most people.
The Mediterranean diet is a fantasy made up diet by a white man, Ancel Keys. Ancel Keys’ research has been heavily scrutinized in our modern times. Ancel was fond of vacationing in Southern Europe and he put together a diet that Julius Caesar, Socrates, Cleopatra and the Medici family would not recognized.
First, let’s just look at a map of the Mediterranean.
Half of the Mediterranean is Northern Africa. Ansel wasn’t vacationing there. Ansel Keys was born in 1904 so foods common in Northern Africa like teff, cassava, yuca, sorghum or millet would be very foreign to the average white American in his time. Besides this (you can read more about the whiteness of the Med diet here), most of the foods concocted to be part of the Mediterranean diet are not native or traditional to Italy or Greece for most of humankind. For example, tomatoes, corn and potatoes are native to the New World and have only been in Europe for 500 years. Eggplant is native to Asia and has only been in Italy for a relatively short time. Vegetable oils like corn, soy, canola and peanut have only been around since the industrial revolution. The reason why people live longer in some areas vs others has a lot to do with other factors such as exercise and quality of life. There are people that eat every diet imaginable on this planet and thrive.
People have historically ate what can be grown in their region. If you live in the mountains or far inland, ocean fish is not going to be a staple of your diet. If you lived far north, butter is going to be used instead of olive oil. The mixing of eating every world cuisine is a very modern phenomena. It was not possible before cheap air travel and refrigeration for this to happen. I believe most people’s health problems are from eating a city diet of mixing cuisines daily. Even though most people where I live are fairly thin (Manhattan), most women have a thyroid dysfunction and I would guess about 90% of women are taking a medication to treat that. Thyroid dysfunction is a major cause of infertility. It’s not natural and has never been done til very modern times to one day eat Thai food, the next eat Ethopian, then Chinese, then Italian, then Scandinavian, then French with a splash of American at the end.
Unless your ancestors are from Italy or Greece, the Mediterranean diet is probably not for you.
The easiest thing you can do is eat a diet mainly of the foods your ancestors ate. Making exceptions a few times a week is not a big deal but the majority of your meals should be what your great grandparents ate. If you look at people that have recently immigrated here, that is what they do. You don’t see the levels of obesity or other health problems with recent immigrants that you see with the average American. They aren’t eating a global cuisine every day.
Yes, I know it’s boring but it’s an easy way to get healthy without even trying. When I was growing up, I used to hate it that my old school Puerto Rican father wanted to eat rice and beans everyday. Now I get it. It was the olden ways of eating. People didn’t eat something radically different everyday. People ate what was in season combined with what can be stored year round in their climate. Lettuce doesn’t grow all year round. It’s not normal at all to eat salad year round. People of European ancestry should not be eating tropical fruits. It’s more sugar that what was ever in a traditional European diet and terrible for women with PCOS. People of Asian ancestry for the most part should not be consuming cow’s dairy. Many of my Asian American patients try to fight lactose intolerance. It’s not worth it.
For effortless health, eat the foods your ancestors ate. Stop trying to eat a diet that was developed by a white man and primarily tested on white people.