What are the Benefits of Mediterranean Diet?
Health benefits of the Mediterranean diet are hard to ignore. Because of the ingredients used, health benefits range from weight loss to prevention of diseases. Some of them are as follows–
- Reduces the risk of heart disease - Mediterranean diet is advantageous for cardiovascular risk factors, including total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure and blood sugar levels. It also reduces the risk of cardiovascular mortality.
- Helps prevent major diseases - Mediterranean diet reduces the incidence of cancer and cancer mortality, and also reduces the incidence of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.
- Maintains a healthy body weight - Being physically active and consuming a diet rich in plant foods, low in red meat and meat products, high-fat dairy, refined grains; and including a moderate amount of alcohol (mainly red wine) as in Mediterranean diet, helps people to lose weight.
- Lowers the risk of metabolic syndrome - Mediterranean diet reduces the odds of developing the risk factors of metabolic syndrome such as high blood pressure, high blood sugar, large waist circumference leading to abdominal obesity, high triglycerides and low HDL cholesterol, thereby reducing the incidence of heart disease, diabetes and stroke.
- Reduces the risk of overall mortality - This healthy diet plan increases the lifespan.
