Nutrition-wise

Good nutrition protects against an unbalanced diet and its long-term complications. Three meals (plus a snack for children, adolescents and the elderly) are recommended.

A complete breakfast is necessary to start the day well and avoid snacking during the morning.    

 
Do not skip meals: this is bad for the dietary balance, difficult for the digestive system, and risky for weight maintenance;
Eat a light dinner: avoid consuming starch, because calories are not burned off during the evening.

For your morning or afternoon snacks, fruit is recommended. For children, bread should be favoured over jams, and cereal with semi-skimmed milk is better than rich, fatty snacks).

Vary your nutrition and opt for a diet rich in fibre by increasing your intake of cereals, vegetables, brown bread, etc.

Eat a minimum of 5 daily portions of cooked or raw fruit and vegetables for an antioxidant boost that limits the harmful effects of free radicals.
To reduce your consumption of salt, simply replace it with other spices (coriander, dill, etc.) and avoid cured products (sausages and hard-skinned cheeses) or ready meals.

Limit your consumption of foods rich in cholesterol and saturated fatty acids by replacing butter, for example, with margarine (a source of vegetable fat), whole milk with semiskimmed milk, (just as rich in calcium and vitamin B12), and cheeses with light yogurts or low-fat cottage cheese. Above all, limit your consumption of snacks.

Consume meat a maximum of 3 times a week, favouring lean meats like poultry, veal and horse rather than offal. (As far as poultry is concerned, the darker the colour of the meat, the richer its fat content, meaning that thighs and wings contain more fat than the white meat. Nevertheless, it must be said that even those parts are less fatty than red meat.)

Do not eat eggs more than twice a week. Caution: Cakes contain large amounts of eggs, and if you consume a lot of eggs, favour Columbus eggs, enriched with vitamins, mineral salts, omega-3, which minimize the negative effects of the cholesterol with their supplementation.

Consume the maximum amount of fish, not forgetting cold-water fish, which are a rich source of omega-3.
Limit your consumption of alcohol.
Drink 1.5 litres of water per day.

 

Bread or cereals, wholegrain if possible
 + honey, jam (fructose-enriched) or dark chocolate
+ fruit or fruit juice
+ dairy product (semiskimmed milk or low-fat plain yogurt or fruit yogurt)
+ cold drink (optional)

Morning snack:
1 fruit (optional)
Lunch:
Meat, poultry, fish, lean cooked meats, cheese (fish is better than meat)
+ raw vegetable
+ cooked vegetable or soup
+ bread or pasta or rice
+ fruit
Afternoon snack:

   1 fruit or 1 dairy product (optional)
Dinner:
Meat, poultry, fish, lean cooked meats, cheese (in moderation)
+ cooked vegetable or soup
+ bread or pasta or rice (in moderation)
+ fruit
Drink:
- Water, as much as desired
- 2 glasses of wine
- Maximum 2 coffees or teas
 
An example:

The so-called Mediterranean diet is the diet which most closely matches the recommended diet. If you would like to know more about the Cretan diet, read “The Omega-3 Diet” by Dr M. de Lorgeril and P. Salen.

It focuses on:

 Eating at least 7 portions of fruit and vegetable per day.

Eating more proteins of vegetable origin, including peas, beans and nuts.

Using unsaturated vegetable oils such as olive oil and rapeseed oil as the basic fat.

Avoiding saturated fats by selecting lean meats (poultry, rabbit) and low-fat dairy products.

Avoiding oils rich in Omega 6 fatty acids, such as sunflower oil, corn oil and soybean oil.

 Reducing the intake of transfatty acids which block the positive action of Omega 3s, by avoiding any product mentioning the presence of hydrogenated vegetable oil, which includes certain margarines, mass-produced cakes, fried products, snacks and ready meals.

Eating foods rich in omega-3s, such as oily fish (salmon, tuna, trout, herring, mackerel), nuts, rapeseed oil, linseed and green leafy vegetables.