Foods and food components in the Mediterranean diet: supporting overall effects.

The recent publication of the PREDIMED trial provided definitive evidence that a Mediterranean diet provides protection against cardiovascular disease. Two articles published in BMC Medicine provide further understanding of why this may be the case, by considering contributory effects of olive oil, a core food in the diet, and polyphenols, a class of identifiable protective compounds. Using a number of statistical models, analyses were conducted to show around a 35% cardiovascular disease risk reduction in the highest consumers of olive oil and a similar degree of risk reduction for all-cause mortality comparing highest to lowest quintiles of polyphenol intake. The effects were an advance on cohort studies not related to trials. This suggests that it may be necessary to have better control of the background diet to enable exposure of the value of individual foods and nutrients in a dietary pattern, bearing in mind that, by nature, it is difficult to separate out effects of foods, nutrients and whole diets.