Harvard Medical School said it, and eleven cardiologists told former British PM David Cameron in an open letter. The colourful Mediterranean Diet (The Rainbow Diet) is the best diet available to prevent the chronic illnesses that beset the Western World.
The Harvard Health Letter stated that “convincing evidence published in 2013 has shown that the Mediterranean diet is effective at warding off heart attack, premature death and stroke”. A further Harvard Medical Study showed that women wherever they lived in the world, who adhered most closely to the easy diet recipes had a 40% greater chace of living longer and were free of 11 chronic illnesses at the end of the 15 year study.
And a team of eleven International cardiologists led by Dr. Richard Hoffman and Dr. Aseem Malhotra wrote an ‘open-letter’ to British Prime Minister, David Cameron, urging him to adopt the colourful Mediterranean Diet. They stated “The evidence base for the Mediterranean Diet in preventing all of the chronic illnesses that are plaguing the Western world is overwhelming”.
Eat a Rainbow
I started speaking about cancer – how to prevent it and how to correct it – in 2002 as a result of my daughter’s Glioma and our attempts to find alternatives that could keep her alive. Speeches have taken me all over the world; Japan, the USA, Australia, Russia, Germany, the UK and more. But then, I live in Thailand and France.
Inevitably, when I came off stage people would ask “But what’s the best diet to fight cancer?” So, in 2004 I made up my mind to conduct my own ‘Meta-study’ looking at as much hard research data as I could find. In 2004, Western Health Authorities recommended a low fat, high carbohydrate diet, while the media was full of how healthy recipes the South East Asian diet was. I went through research study after research study, but then originally I was an Oxford University Biochemist. Both the Western Health Authorities and the mass media were wrong.
In 2005/6 there was only limited research on the ‘colourful Mediterranean Diet’ and that was mainly from Harvard Medical School. Even they confused the North shore with the Southern. The diet of Tunis is a lot different to that of Toulon. But one thing kept recurring – The French Paradox. Perhaps it was my years in advertising where you look for a grain of truth and then test it again and again to see if it fact or fantasy. Here, in the French Paradox, was a grain of truth that Health Authorities kept sweeping under the carpet. You see, it didn’t fit at all with the mass health theories of the West.
What is the French Paradox? The French eat more fat and drink more alcohol than any other nation, but they have less heart disease and less cancer. My house faces St. Tropez. I know the colourful Mediterranean Diet well. I learned to speak French just south of Tarbes, the birthplace of D’Artagnan, in Gascony. On one trip there, everyone was discussing the newspaper headline. The French had conducted their own study into the Paradox. And guess what? The epicenter was exactly where we were, just south of Toulouse. The home of foie gras and cassoulet. A place where people enjoy their sausages and cheese, all washed down by Madiran, the local red wine, and a glass of Armagnac, from Gers. Here they eat even more fat and drink even more alcohol than the rest of France. And they have even less cancer and even less heart disease!