42 Joel Fuhrman, M.D.
your LDL (bad) cholesterol, not lower it. Weight gain raises your
cholesterol; unprocessed foods such as nuts, seeds, and vegetables,
utilized as a source of fat and calories instead of oil, contain phytosterols
and other natural substances that lower cholesterol.^24 Also, keep in
mind that in Italy, where they consume all that supposedly healthy
olive oil, people have twice the chance ot getting breast cancer as in
Japan, where they have a significantly lower fat intake.^25
The Mediterranean Diet looked better than ours because of the
increased consumption of vegetation, not because of the oil. People
who use olive oil generally put it on vegetables such as salads and
tomatoes, so its use is correlated with higher consumption of pro-
duce. Their diets were better, in spite of the oil consumption, not be-
cause of it.
If you are thin and exercise a lot, one tablespoon of olive oil a day
is no big deal, but the best choice for most overweight Americans is
no oil at all.
The Popularity of the Mediterranean Diet
Entire books have been written advocating the benefits of the Med-
iterranean diet. One such book, for those interested in this line of
thinking, is Low-Fat Lies, High-Fat Frauds, by Kevin Vigilante and
Mary Flynn.^26They accurately point out that calories do matter and explain that
the main reason such carbohydrate-restricting, high-fat diets as Atkins
and Sugar Busters work is that most people can't eat too many calories
from high-fat food because they can eat only so much rich, fatty
food — so they wind up eating fewer calories. This is only partially
true. However, research has shown that weight loss is about the same
from any type of food eaten when caloric intake is equally low.27
Their
main message is threefold: first, eat mostly phytochemical-rich plant
foods to maximize health and disease prevention; second, caloric re-
striction and exercise must be maintained for positive results; and
third, healthy fats, especially olive oil, should not be restricted, be-
cause a diet without these fats is both unhealthy and unpalatable.
The diet they recommend, which watches saturated fat intake and
avoids trans fats, is a nice improvement over the diet most Americans
eat. Certainly it is better to use olive oil than butter or margarine.I have only a few bones to pick with those advocating this diet
style. First, they claim that cooking food in olive oil increases phyto-