Lies Regarding the Mediterranean Diet
We all know that the Mediterranean diet is good for you. Jordanians have a life expectancy higher than Americans. Rural Palestinians in particular are known for their longevity. (People in the Middle East have a paralyzing fear of the evil eye. Once I mentioned Palestinian longevity at work and a superstitious Palestinian woman told me that my statement would be worse for the Palestinians than Israel.) I will use the rural Palestinian diet as an anecdotal case study.
First of all, let's start with the truths in the popular media: rural Palestinians don't eat much meat compared to Americans. This may be because of poverty, but regardless of the reason, they're certainly not eating meat on a daily basis. They eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, especially leafy vegetables. In fact, there's a joke about a guy who married a Palestinian woman: The first day, she made him molokhiyya; the second day she made him spinach; the third day, she made him khobbayzah. The fourth day, he told her, "Don't bother cooking; I'll just go out and graze on my own." They certainly also eat a lot of legumes and a fair amount of seeds and a ton of grains. The main fat is olive oil.
The Palestinians also eat a lot of dairy, so much so that you'd think that someone was trying to take it away from them. They cook meat with yogurt or jameed, put yogurt on their rice at dinner time, and even their sweets are stuffed with cheese. Virtually every meal has dairy in it. However, the whole idea of low-fat dairy is a farce. Virtually all of the dairy they eat is full-fat. (Read the last two sentences a few more times until they register.) When they make sweets, they used clarified butter (samn baladi). Dairy fat that comes from grass fed animals is high in CLA, which helps reduce atherosclerosis. In other words, stop giving dairy fat from grass-fed animals a bad name. It might actually be one of the secrets behind the Mediterranean diet.
Although rural Palestinians don't eat a lot of meat, when they do, they certainly don't go for low-fat meat. The sheep in this area are the fat-tailed variety. When buying ground beef, it is common practice for a chunk of tail fat from a sheep's carcass to be cut off and thrown in to the mix because beef is too lean for local taste. When grilling, chunks of sheep tail fat are put on the skewers alongside the meat, onions, and tomatoes. When a sheep is slaughtered, the tail is sometimes melted down and purified into tallow (much in the same way that lard is produced) to be used for cooking. Once again, we find that the popular notion of shunning animal fat in the Mediterranean diet is a farce.
What you don't find in the rural Palestinian diet is: tofu, soybean, corn, canola, and cottonseed oils or hydrogenated fats. However, things are changing now. People now, "realize" that animal fats are bad for them and have started switching to vegetable oils. Over the next couple generations, this will probably be followed by a decrease in life expectancy.
First of all, let's start with the truths in the popular media: rural Palestinians don't eat much meat compared to Americans. This may be because of poverty, but regardless of the reason, they're certainly not eating meat on a daily basis. They eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, especially leafy vegetables. In fact, there's a joke about a guy who married a Palestinian woman: The first day, she made him molokhiyya; the second day she made him spinach; the third day, she made him khobbayzah. The fourth day, he told her, "Don't bother cooking; I'll just go out and graze on my own." They certainly also eat a lot of legumes and a fair amount of seeds and a ton of grains. The main fat is olive oil.
The Palestinians also eat a lot of dairy, so much so that you'd think that someone was trying to take it away from them. They cook meat with yogurt or jameed, put yogurt on their rice at dinner time, and even their sweets are stuffed with cheese. Virtually every meal has dairy in it. However, the whole idea of low-fat dairy is a farce. Virtually all of the dairy they eat is full-fat. (Read the last two sentences a few more times until they register.) When they make sweets, they used clarified butter (samn baladi). Dairy fat that comes from grass fed animals is high in CLA, which helps reduce atherosclerosis. In other words, stop giving dairy fat from grass-fed animals a bad name. It might actually be one of the secrets behind the Mediterranean diet.
Although rural Palestinians don't eat a lot of meat, when they do, they certainly don't go for low-fat meat. The sheep in this area are the fat-tailed variety. When buying ground beef, it is common practice for a chunk of tail fat from a sheep's carcass to be cut off and thrown in to the mix because beef is too lean for local taste. When grilling, chunks of sheep tail fat are put on the skewers alongside the meat, onions, and tomatoes. When a sheep is slaughtered, the tail is sometimes melted down and purified into tallow (much in the same way that lard is produced) to be used for cooking. Once again, we find that the popular notion of shunning animal fat in the Mediterranean diet is a farce.
What you don't find in the rural Palestinian diet is: tofu, soybean, corn, canola, and cottonseed oils or hydrogenated fats. However, things are changing now. People now, "realize" that animal fats are bad for them and have started switching to vegetable oils. Over the next couple generations, this will probably be followed by a decrease in life expectancy.
posted by Flicken @ 8:41 AM
2 Comments:
At 8:02 PM ,
UmmFarouq said...
I wish my Palestinian family members at the more traditional way. While they do use quite a bit of olive oil, they also tend to fry everything in the trans fatty stuff (cauliflower, potatoes, you know the drill); eat way too much processed flour and white rice, etc. We are not, however, strangers to khobeizeh. I love that stuff.
At 6:11 AM ,
Flicken said...
The trans fats and other harmful vegetable oils found in so many baked goods these days will probably have a long-term detrimental effect. What I fear is that people will start blaming the animal fats that Palestinians have always eaten on their new health problems. I can imagine them recommending low-fat dairy and lean meat instead of cutting out trans fats or the vegetable oils that are found in almost everything nowadays.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home