[R.B.]

Hi Karen and thanks for your help Mtngrl,

Whilst I have been nerding for several years on the subject of Omega 3 and 6 and wider diet, and have completed a not well written but general scientifically sound and hopefully thought provoking book on Omega 3 and 6, and their impact on western disease, I am not an expert in the traditional sense of the word in that I have no formal qualifications. I have been working for several years on a follow up that puts Omega 3 and 6 into a wider dietary context through the common thread of oxidative stress and its role in western disease.

Whilst the thread was titled the Greek Diet, the traditional Mediterranean diet lifestyle is in a sense a ghost, so it is not adequate just to refer to a particular diet plan, because even unprocessed food it not what it was a generation or two ago. Traditional Island foods were locally grown on highly mineralized often volcanic based soils. Goats and chicken got to wander and select their own foods. Islanders got sun and exercise etc.

The Mediterranean diet is not the only protective one. Reports by doctors working with a mix of European and native populations in locations around the world in the 1920s to 1940s clearly showed tribes on a wide variety of native diets rarely got western conditions - so it is as much about food quality and mix as type of diet.

Today in contrast western diseases are common in the same population groups that have moved to the west.

Our diets are not what they were. Most of us are deficient in one or more minerals (RDA) because the crops we and animals feed on no longer contain the mineral content they did. We abstract minerals in crops and do not replace them. A British paper records drops over the last 50 years of the amounts of various minerals in a basket of foods foods of between 20-70%. This is partly due to soil depletion and partly to breeding for carbohydrate quantity / size rather than mineral density etc. These mineral deficits obviously work up the food chain to us, and are a factor in all sorts of ailments, in both humans and animals (e.g. sheep often need to be routinely given minerals because the farmers know otherwise they are not sufficiently healthy to reproduce - but ironically we often do not ensure women with fertility issue are mineral sufficient)

Most of us are vitamin D deficient because we no longer go in the sun / wear sun cream / wash with soap before or after going in the sun.

Many of us are iodine deficient.

A good proportion of us are deficient in one or more B vitamins

Many of us are vitamin K deficient.

We eat way to much Omega 6 and not enough Omega 3

To add to these woes we refine food, and try to increase its shelf life. We treat crops / foods with all sorts of things like ammonia and bleach to prevent bacteria formation. As well as killing the bacteria these processes arguably can damage important sensitive nutrients. Many of the processes used in refining, damage the food (oxidation in various forms), as well as removing minerals.

Precooked stored meals etc probably add to the problem.

Vegetable water, the juices from meat etc and the nutrients they contain go down the sink. . .

Digestive disturbances can impair digestion - eg H Pylori affects absorption, of iron, vitamin c, and folate. Many of us have impaired digestion for a variety of reasons.

Grains contain anti nutrients, including phytate. Fermentation reduces phytate, but under the commercial imperative we have found ways of making bread rise quickly without fermenting it so saving several hours, and ironically sometimes even add phytate to bread, leading to blocking of mineral uptake. Most traditional cultures fermented their grains prior to eating them.

The lists just go on . . .

Trying to mimic a long gone Mediterranean diet of one sort or another is a hugely positive step compared to eating high levels of processed foods, but there is no ideal modern equivalent diet based on historic diets, because we have so badly distorted the quality and variety of food, and depleted it of nutrients. Even if you notionally ate the same food as your grandparents it will not contain as many nutrients, and will have been damaged by some of the industrial processes used in its storage and preparation.


Sunshine, a wide range of home grown foods on mineral rich volcanic soils, marine foods, chickens and goats that wandered round the mountains, and exercise, kept Mediterranean people healthy until they started working indoors and eating processed foods . . . better start saving for your own Island if you want a true Greek Island diet

So even with a whole (unprocessed) food diet most of us urban dwellers will be nutrient deficient. Appropriate supplementation, however imperfect and difficult to optimise, has to be a better option than deficiencies in essential very basic nutrients, particularly iodine, Vit D, minerals, K, etc. In very general terms at sensible recommended supplementation levels, for most healthy people but not necessarily those with specialist conditions, the negatives from deficiency far outweigh the risks of toxicity. Just to be clear I am not a fan of supplementation in general terms for iodine, Vit D, minerals, K, etc. as they are much better obtained in food (sunshine is the primary source in the case of Vit D) - the problem is they are not in general in foods in sufficient quantities any more. How much we get is a lottery as different soils contain different mixes and amounts.

There is a great deal we do not understand as to how the body absorbs minerals etc, but cows lick iron gateposts to get at the iron they contain, wild animals seek out mineral licks, and farmers give them mineral supplements so they reproduce, and they do. So clearly supplementation may not be optimal but has a place, and particularly so if you do not want to go to work with a gatepost for lunch - they are quite heavy and do not fit well into pockets.

However as stated. pragmatically supplementation however imperfect is a much better option than deficiency. For many of us, what we have done to the food chain / modern lifestyle, leaves us with little option but to supplement. Welcome to the nutritional lottery / risk reward guesstimate game.

Supplementation is of course an add on to doing the best we can do to pick the most nutritious foods available to us and should be undertaken only in consultation with your medical advisors.

I hope this helps. The above is a hint of what I have been nerding away at, and am currently preparing what I hope is a final restructure of the new book I have occasionally mentioned over the years, which has taken rather longer than expected, there is always just one more thing to check . . . In the meanwhile there is a book I would recommend with which I share much common ground albeit from a different perspective, which I will link to hopefully at the weekend (sorry for the delay), along with some blogs links that may be of interest