Have you ever wondered how the famous fashionable Mediterranean diet appeared?
The simplest products are on the table – fish, spaghetti, vegetables baked in olive oil, olives themselves and red wine. Sometimes white meat is allowed. That's how they eat in Spain. This is a classic Mediterranean diet that the World Health Association recommends as the healthiest in the world. It is officially included in the list of factors that reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Red wine, and only high-quality dry red wine, plays a special role here. It contains polyphenols, which, like olive oil, protect the vessels from damage. The health and protective effect associated with polyphenols and antioxidants has exactly one glass of wine a day, no more, no less. White wine has an average effect, other drinks do not have such a balanced set of substances.
It's amazing how the diet, compiled on the basis of modern research, exactly coincides with what the ancestors bequeathed to southern Europeans, isn't it? These precepts were taken from poverty: meat in coastal countries has always been expensive, and wine began to drink because of the banal lack of drinking water, because alcohol kills germs. So there is such a simple answer.