This is crucial as cell damage can lead to chronic diseases, such as cancer and heart disease. In fact, olive oil is listed as one of 39 foods that unclog arteries. There are various types of olive oil that can be purchased, but extra virgin olive oil is the most unprocessed. Check out this article if you are interested in learning about what to look for when purchasing olive oil.

The majority of their meals contain whole plant-based foods. Therefore using olive oil when cooking, adds flavor to their foods. Additionally, incorporating olive oil into every meal will increase satiety or fullness.

while also reaping the benefits of the antioxidants called polyphenols. There is a range of studies that are looking into the amount of olive oil to improve various health conditions.

However, it is important to note that the exact amount each person needs varies based on their sex, body size, activity level, and other fat sources consumed. Regardless of the exact amount of olive oil, there have been beneficial results seen with replacing saturated fats with olive oil.

In fact, this is a predominant message in the heart-healthy eating guidelines; reduce your saturated fats by replacing them with unsaturated fats to eat a moderately high-fat diet 4. In the past, the message was to reduce saturated fats, period. However, we learned that this low-fat way of eating did not provide health benefits.

Now the messaging has changed to consume a higher fat eating pattern, but it is encouraged to eat less saturated fat and more unsaturated fats when doing so 4. For example, a study showed that 4 tablespoons of olive oil a day resulted in a reduced risk of cardiac events like heart attack and stroke 4.

While another study showed that a mere 1 tablespoon of olive oil was preventative for developing type 2 diabetes 6. Incorporating any amount of olive oil into your daily routine is sure to be protective against various health conditions. This is especially true if olive oil is replacing other potentially harmful fat sources such as saturated fats like animal meats, high-fat dairy, and lard.

Olive oil is protective against heart disease by reducing inflammation of the blood vessels and reducing our blood pressure 1. This inflammation and high blood pressure make our heart work harder and can result in chronic heart disease.

Olive oil also contains an abundance of antioxidants that can help reduce plaque build-up in the blood vessels by reducing the concentration of fats in the blood 1. This ensures our blood can flow more easily and reach the body parts it needs to!

The PREDMIED study was a large study of over individuals which provided strong evidence that a Mediterranean dietary pattern is a suitable eating pattern for cardiovascular prevention. I showed improvement in blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, lipid profiles, lipoprotein particles, inflammation, oxidative stress, and carotid atherosclerosis 8.

Additionally, the LYON study was another randomized control trial, that showed eating the Mediterranean way reduced the chance of a secondary cardiac event 9. Thus, not only does it prevent cardiovascular disease, but it can prevent another cardiac event if one has already occurred.

The Mediterranean diet is filled with fruits, vegetables, and grains that are packed with fiber, ensuring you have regular bowel. Not only will including more fiber-rich food help prevent constipation, but olive oil itself has been shown to treat constipation 7. The olive oil allowed for softer stools, similar to other stool softeners that are used to treat constipation.

As mentioned before, the primary fat in olive oil is monounsaturated fat. This type of fat has been shown to increase insulin sensitivity and improve fasting blood sugar levels, both of which are vital for diabetes control 4 , Weight loss is complicated.

It involves more than eating fewer calories than you burn. A lot of research studies have shown that when individuals follow a Mediterranean diet, they lose weight 1 , This could be because the majority of the diet is plant foods, which are low in calories, and high in fiber.

Thus, creating a very filling satiating way of eating. For someone consuming a calorie diet, that is around calories. As long as your fat intake is less than that, it is safe.

Rather it encourages more nutrient-dense plant foods like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds to be added to your diet. Eating this way reveals a low saturated fat intake, and allows room for unsaturated fats like olive oil to be consumed.

In my opinion, adding olive oil can flavor plant foods. This enhanced flavor can increase the likelihood that one will eat more vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and legumes.

Ultimately, increasing compliance with the Mediterranean diet. Olive oil is extremely versatile and can be added to almost every meal. Even better, it can be used as a replacement for some more unhealthy fats, such as saturated or animal fats.

Drinking olive oil is one of many trends you may have seen in the media that promises endless health benefits. However, there is no research to prove it is any more effective when taken as a drink compared to when it is incorporated into a meal.

It may provide some benefits if you are struggling to get enough olive oil into your diet. But, as the above suggestions show, there are plenty of ideas on how to add it to increase your intake.

While olive oil is extremely nutrient-dense, it is also calorically dense, with each tablespoon providing a whopping calories Consuming olive oil in addition to your current eating pattern may result in an excess amount of calories that can lead to weight gain.

Enjoying olive oil and the Mediterranean diet can lead to many health benefits. The Mediterranean way of eating is a sustainable, healthy diet that can result in long-term health benefits for many.

Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Home Cholesterol Olive Oil and The Mediterranean Diet: How Much Is Too Much? Olive oil and the Mediterranean diet are two words you may hear interchangeably.

Top Takeaways The Mediterranean diet emphasizes the consumption of olive oil as the primary source of fat. It is associated with longevity, better heart health, prevention of chronic diseases, and weight loss. This diet includes plant-based foods like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts, and olive oil, with moderate amounts of fish, dairy, eggs, and red wine, while limiting meat and sweets.

Olive oil is rich in monounsaturated fats, which are beneficial for cardiovascular health, insulin sensitivity, and diabetes management. It also contains polyphenols that protect against cell damage.

While there is no specific daily recommendation for olive oil intake, incorporating it into every meal can provide health benefits. The Mediterranean diet is not solely about the types of food but also emphasizes how meals are enjoyed, often in the company of family and friends, with a focus on leisurely eating and digestion.

This diet can help reduce the risk of heart disease, inflammation, and constipation, promote weight loss, and improve overall health when combined with a balanced eating pattern. For people focused on healthy eating in the new year, advice from specialists and, problematically, non-specialists can be hard to decipher, never mind follow.

But one diet in particular has withstood the test of time and been repeatedly heralded by doctors and researchers as promoting vitality and longevity. The regimen favors healthy fats such as those found in olive oil and nuts and sets limits on consumption of animal products. Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.

A general rule of thumb is to think about having two servings of animal-sourced foods per day, which would be about one serving of dairy a day and about one serving of another animal-sourced protein. This could mean having red meat about once a week, fish a couple of times a week, poultry a couple of times a week, and eggs a couple of times a week.

Although I should say that 25 years ago, many people were not very familiar with whole grains. And most people were not familiar with good olive oil. I remember growing up in Michigan, my mom had this little bottle of olive oil up on the top shelf that had been sitting there for years; it was rancid and tasted terrible.

For example, you could swap out olive oil for many other types of plant oils. In Asian diets soybean oil has traditionally been one of the dominant oils, used for preparing stir-fried dishes with lots of vegetables and nuts.

The available fruits may also be different, and tofu is a widely consumed plant-protein source. About two years ago, we published a paper examining olive oil consumption here in the U.

in relation to risk of heart disease and total mortality. In our large cohort studies, there were inverse relationships — in other words, better health with higher amounts of olive oil in the diet, but we also observed similar inverse relationships with other plant oils, like soybean and canola oil.

Of course, this depends what you do on those other days. If you really wanted to get the full benefit, it would be eating a healthy dietary pattern most of the time. Looked at another way, there is benefit with each step in the right direction.

This pattern is related to lower risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, multiple cancers, neurologic diseases, dementia — the list just goes on and on. Some of us who have become accustomed to a Mediterranean-type pattern find the thought of returning to our Midwestern pattern — with large servings of meat, mountains of potatoes, lakes of butter, and slabs of cheese — a bit repulsive.

The big one was that all fat is bad and therefore the Mediterranean diet should be avoided. This was conventional wisdom in the nutrition community in the s and s, and it was embedded in dietary guidelines. The nutrition community has moved on to focus on the types of fat, which is supported by layers of evidence, but there are still lingering strains of this idea.

The Mediterranean diet is far from the only area of study related to food and health. What else have we learned lately? Until recently, we have had little information on diet during childhood and adolescence in relation to long-term health. We are now able to look at the effects of diet at different points in life.

They also lost a little weight and had less memory loss. The most recent results showed that it also reduced chances of breast cancer, albeit in a small number of women.

Picking through the data, the researchers found that the extra olive oil group did slightly better than the extra nut group, but both were clearly superior to low fat diets.

The research was also much more reliable than many diet studies because it was a randomised control trial that looked at a large group of people over a long period of time, rather than just monitoring people on one diet for a few days or weeks. Extra fibre, a diverse range of fruits and vegetables, whole grains and legumes, yoghurts and cheese, small amounts of fish and meat, red wine, nuts and seeds and good quality olive oil all played their part.

However the authors believe that the olive oil itself was the most powerful single factor. The difference between the grades of oil lies not just in the lower acidity, freshness and richer taste but in the number of chemicals released called polyphenols.

High grade extra virgin oil, especially if cold extracted, has around 30 polyphenols that act as antioxidants, which reduce inflammation and also help reduce the effects of aging particularly on the heart and brain.

Until recently it was thought these antioxidant polyphenols acted directly on genes and blood vessels. But it turns out that they also work via our gut microbes that make up our microbiome. This is the community of trillions of diverse bacteria which live in our large intestine.

They feed off the different polyphenols and produce other small chemicals short chain fatty acids that dampen down inflammation and help our immune system. Complex high fat foods such as extra virgin olive oil, when eaten with a wide variety of other healthy polyphenol-dense foods, provide the basis for a rich and diverse community of gut microbes.

This diversity is increasingly being shown to be important for our health. Critics of olive oil, who usually promote untested alternatives, suggest its lower burning temperature make make it more likely to produce potential carcinogens in cooking.

But the Spanish participants in the trial regularly cooked with the oil, reassuringly with no obvious health consequences. Eating extra virgin olive oil as part of a diverse Mediterranean diet is clearly beneficial in Spanish adults. If we start educating people to use high-quality extra virgin olive oil early in life and change its stigma as a medicine or punishment, we could make our populations and our gut microbiomes healthier.

Although we are unlikely to ever match the Greeks. Menu Close Home Edition Africa Australia Brasil Canada Canada français España Europe France Global Indonesia New Zealand United Kingdom United States.

Edition: Available editions Europe. Check out this article if you are interested in learning about what to look for when purchasing olive oil. The majority of their meals contain whole plant-based foods. Therefore using olive oil when cooking, adds flavor to their foods.

Additionally, incorporating olive oil into every meal will increase satiety or fullness. while also reaping the benefits of the antioxidants called polyphenols.

There is a range of studies that are looking into the amount of olive oil to improve various health conditions. However, it is important to note that the exact amount each person needs varies based on their sex, body size, activity level, and other fat sources consumed.

Regardless of the exact amount of olive oil, there have been beneficial results seen with replacing saturated fats with olive oil.

In fact, this is a predominant message in the heart-healthy eating guidelines; reduce your saturated fats by replacing them with unsaturated fats to eat a moderately high-fat diet 4.

In the past, the message was to reduce saturated fats, period. However, we learned that this low-fat way of eating did not provide health benefits. Now the messaging has changed to consume a higher fat eating pattern, but it is encouraged to eat less saturated fat and more unsaturated fats when doing so 4.

For example, a study showed that 4 tablespoons of olive oil a day resulted in a reduced risk of cardiac events like heart attack and stroke 4.

While another study showed that a mere 1 tablespoon of olive oil was preventative for developing type 2 diabetes 6. Incorporating any amount of olive oil into your daily routine is sure to be protective against various health conditions. This is especially true if olive oil is replacing other potentially harmful fat sources such as saturated fats like animal meats, high-fat dairy, and lard.

Olive oil is protective against heart disease by reducing inflammation of the blood vessels and reducing our blood pressure 1. This inflammation and high blood pressure make our heart work harder and can result in chronic heart disease. Olive oil also contains an abundance of antioxidants that can help reduce plaque build-up in the blood vessels by reducing the concentration of fats in the blood 1.

This ensures our blood can flow more easily and reach the body parts it needs to! The PREDMIED study was a large study of over individuals which provided strong evidence that a Mediterranean dietary pattern is a suitable eating pattern for cardiovascular prevention.

I showed improvement in blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, lipid profiles, lipoprotein particles, inflammation, oxidative stress, and carotid atherosclerosis 8. Additionally, the LYON study was another randomized control trial, that showed eating the Mediterranean way reduced the chance of a secondary cardiac event 9.

Thus, not only does it prevent cardiovascular disease, but it can prevent another cardiac event if one has already occurred. The Mediterranean diet is filled with fruits, vegetables, and grains that are packed with fiber, ensuring you have regular bowel.

Not only will including more fiber-rich food help prevent constipation, but olive oil itself has been shown to treat constipation 7. The olive oil allowed for softer stools, similar to other stool softeners that are used to treat constipation. As mentioned before, the primary fat in olive oil is monounsaturated fat.

This type of fat has been shown to increase insulin sensitivity and improve fasting blood sugar levels, both of which are vital for diabetes control 4 , Weight loss is complicated.

It involves more than eating fewer calories than you burn. A lot of research studies have shown that when individuals follow a Mediterranean diet, they lose weight 1 , This could be because the majority of the diet is plant foods, which are low in calories, and high in fiber. Thus, creating a very filling satiating way of eating.

For someone consuming a calorie diet, that is around calories. As long as your fat intake is less than that, it is safe. Rather it encourages more nutrient-dense plant foods like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds to be added to your diet.

Eating this way reveals a low saturated fat intake, and allows room for unsaturated fats like olive oil to be consumed. In my opinion, adding olive oil can flavor plant foods.

This enhanced flavor can increase the likelihood that one will eat more vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and legumes. Ultimately, increasing compliance with the Mediterranean diet. Olive oil is extremely versatile and can be added to almost every meal. Even better, it can be used as a replacement for some more unhealthy fats, such as saturated or animal fats.

Drinking olive oil is one of many trends you may have seen in the media that promises endless health benefits. However, there is no research to prove it is any more effective when taken as a drink compared to when it is incorporated into a meal.

It may provide some benefits if you are struggling to get enough olive oil into your diet. But, as the above suggestions show, there are plenty of ideas on how to add it to increase your intake.

While olive oil is extremely nutrient-dense, it is also calorically dense, with each tablespoon providing a whopping calories Consuming olive oil in addition to your current eating pattern may result in an excess amount of calories that can lead to weight gain. Enjoying olive oil and the Mediterranean diet can lead to many health benefits.

The Mediterranean way of eating is a sustainable, healthy diet that can result in long-term health benefits for many. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Home Cholesterol Olive Oil and The Mediterranean Diet: How Much Is Too Much? Olive oil and the Mediterranean diet are two words you may hear interchangeably. Top Takeaways The Mediterranean diet emphasizes the consumption of olive oil as the primary source of fat.

It is associated with longevity, better heart health, prevention of chronic diseases, and weight loss. This diet includes plant-based foods like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts, and olive oil, with moderate amounts of fish, dairy, eggs, and red wine, while limiting meat and sweets.

Olive oil is rich in monounsaturated fats, which are beneficial for cardiovascular health, insulin sensitivity, and diabetes management. It also contains polyphenols that protect against cell damage. While there is no specific daily recommendation for olive oil intake, incorporating it into every meal can provide health benefits.

The Mediterranean diet is not solely about the types of food but also emphasizes how meals are enjoyed, often in the company of family and friends, with a focus on leisurely eating and digestion.

This diet can help reduce the risk of heart disease, inflammation, and constipation, promote weight loss, and improve overall health when combined with a balanced eating pattern.

Table of Contents. Top Takeaways What Is The Mediterranean Diet? Benefits Of The Mediterranean Diet Types Of Fats Olive Oil And Mediterranean Diet How Much Olive Oil Per Day In The Mediterranean Diet?