1) How is Beyond The Mediterranean Diet different from other Mediterranean Diet books?
Beyond the Mediterranean Diet is a culinary, travel, diet and cookbook, which offers practical solutions to weight loss resulting in improved health based on the diet secrets of the three healthiest countries in Europe with the lowest rates of obesity, heart disease and the longest lifespans.
2) You start the book sharing about your lifelong search for the healthiest diet. How did your journey with diet and nutrition begin?
It was my personal struggle with high cholesterol and the risk of heart disease at a young age. I was 9 years old, it was 1971, and my pediatrician was ahead of his time. His office just purchased a cholesterol-screening finger stick device. I will never forget that day. My cholesterol was dangerously high, over 300mg/dl. A normal total blood cholesterol is 200mg/dl or less.
I was sent to a lab to have my blood drawn to see if the reading was accurate and it was. To say the least, that was when I began my interest in diet, nutrition and disease. By the time I was in high school, I was writing about it in the Nassau Herald and volunteering in the Heart Research Lab at North Shore University Hospital.
I knew I wanted to study pre-med and nutritional biochemistry and so I applied early decision to the best program that existed at that time which was at Cornell University. I was accepted and on my way to a long career that would not only benefit me, and my family, but I would be able to help the rest of the world.
I studied, did research and worked in many areas of the health and food industries. I spent 20 years as Director of Nutrition for America’s first supermarket chain. I educated our food buyers about nutrition, helped to bring in natural and organic foods and worked with local farmers. The hard part was educating consumers without offending the junk food companies.
Then the unthinkable, happened, my husband received a job offer and it meant a move to Switzerland. It was that first meal on Swiss International Airlines that was a real eye opener and when I realized there was a whole new food culture awaiting me on the other side of the pond! As I started to analyze the health statistics and uncover the dietary habits, I also assimilated and became part of the community, making friends with locals, farmers and the best chefs in the world. I could finally see a clear solution to help Americans back at home get through the diet clutter and embrace a practical method to losing weight and happily getting healthy based on the diet and habits of the three healthiest countries in Europe.
That is why I wrote Beyond The Mediterranean Diet: European Secrets Of The Super-Healthy. It examines and reveals the diet and lifestyle habits of old cultures that are still successful at staying healthy and eating beloved foods like pasta, chocolate, cheese and wine.
With today’s cholesterol guidelines, more and more doctors are prescribing medications, called statins, to reduce cholesterol without giving individuals enough attention on how to lower their risk of heart disease with diet and exercise that one can enjoy forever. It beats taken pharmaceutical drugs, which have side effects. Although there are many people, who do need medication, dietary intervention is the first approach.
Today my cholesterol is controlled with diet and exercise, but remember high cholesterol is only one risk factor for heart disease. Other risk factors include high blood pressure, diabetes, genetic predisposition, obesity and smoking. The body manufactures cholesterol naturally (it’s essential for many functions), and it also gets rid of it of it through your bile acids.
Your body needs some cholesterol to make hormones, vitamin D, and substances that help you digest foods. Your body makes all the cholesterol it needs. However, cholesterol also is found in some of the foods you eat.