Are you tired of eating biryani, fried chicken, or fast food regularly?  Are you looking for a healthy solution?  If yes, a Mediterranean diet can be the best solution for your health.

The Mediterranean diet is a traditional diet followed by the people living along the borderlands of the Mediterranean Sea and originated during the 1960s in Greece and Southern Italy. The style of this diet is unique and appealing.

The Mediterranean diet prioritises vegetables, fruits, whole grains (such as rice, wheat, barley, and maize), beans, nuts, seeds, and legumes. It also includes low-fat or fat-free dairy products, fish, poultry, eggs, and vegetable oils in moderate amounts.

This diet restricts excessive sugary foods, excessive oily foods, sugary beverages, ultra-high processed foods (UHPF), refined carbohydrates, saturated fats, and processed meats.

If you want to be healthy, you must choose the Mediterranean diet. While shifting dietary patterns, you can wisely select the Mediterranean style, as it is one of the best dietary styles to heal your body.

This diet has several potential benefits. They are as follows:

• It helps maintain the body's cholesterol level in a homeostatic condition, preventing heart disease and stroke.

• It reduces the risk of obesity as the diet consists of low carbohydrates and fats.

• It reduces inflammation and oxidative stress in the body as the diet is rich in different types of antioxidants (such as polyphenols, flavonoids, and carotenoids) and also contains complex phytonutrients that exert beneficial effects on our body.

• It controls blood sugar levels as the Mediterranean diet is rich in insoluble fibre from fruits and vegetables.

• It prevents plaque formation in the arteries and maintains a proper balance of fat in the human body.

• It also boosts brain health.

Besides these benefits, the Mediterranean diet has many other positive impacts on our body. When an individual wants to switch their diet from a traditional Western pattern to a healthy meal pattern, they can easily follow the guidelines of the Mediterranean diet. This can be one of the best decisions in life. In fact, everyone should try to follow this diet to become physically, mentally, and socially fit.

The writer is a Lecturer at the Department of Food Engineering and Nutrition Science at State University of Bangladesh.
Email: billal.fet@sub.edu.bd