Health and Wealth

"Socioeconomic disparities in health are growing, also in access to healthy diets."
"We cannot be keeping on saying that the Mediterranean diet is good for health if we are not able to guarantee an equal access to it."
Giovanni de Gaetano, lead researcher, Istituto de Ricovero e Cura a Caratere Scientifico

"Given a comparable adherence to this eating pattern, the study has shown that the reduction in cardiovascular risk is observed only in people with a higher educational level and/or greater household income."
"No actual benefits were observed for the less advantaged groups."
IRCCS Neuromed study

"Adhering optimally to a Mediterranean diet is not enough."
"Other factors beyond quantity and frequency of Mediterranean food appear to influence future health outcomes; one of them may be quality of foods."
Marialaura Bonaccio, study co-author

A Mediterranean diet has been linked to a reduction in cardiovascular risk. However, the health benefits are observed only in people with higher educational level and/or greater household income. No actual benefits were observed for the less advantaged groups.  Credit: © golubovy / Fotolia

Aspirants to good health and longevity, bring your academic intelligence quotient and your bank account to the table with you when you exercise your options to eat healthily to achieve a desired outcome, protecting yourself against a failing heart, stroke, diabetes and all the ills of steadily diminishing health that accompany these harbingers of an early death. That appears to be the conclusion of a group of Italian researchers studying the effect of the Mediterranean Diet, famously touted for its health benefits.

The main conclusion of the study, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology was affirmative, that being loyal to the Mediterranean Diet clearly has its remarkable benefits in better health outcomes. That was the good news. The bad news was that the researchers appear to believe that their study clearly demonstrated that without an advanced education and the advantages inherent in having ample disposable income, adherence to the Mediterranean Diet will never be realized in improved health conditions.

Famously featuring plant-based foods such as vegetables, legumes, nuts, whole grains and fruit, with olive oil the most desirable of fats to be healthily chosen, red wine is thrown in as a special bonus, and there, in a nutshell as it were, you have the Mediterranean diet. Fish is a good addition. Herbs and spices used with distinction complements the chosen foods yet salt is used sparingly to good effect. Red meat, well, acceptable on rare occasions, never to be overdone.

CNN.com

Following the Mediterranean Diet has been previously demonstrated to reduce the risk of heart disease, making that diet one of distinction and an extremely wise choice for those who prefer surviving longer and healthily to enjoy the wonders of life and all that nature bestows upon her creatures. This particular team of researchers from Istituto de Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico (IRCCS) devoted themselves to a finer understanding of the link between this diet and health outcomes.

To that end, they undertook a study sample of over 18,000 southern Italians between the ages of 35 and up, up, up. Among other items they discovered was that cardiovascular benefits were not equal among all the people who followed the Mediterranean diet. And likely it's well to remember that this diet is not a fad diet, it represents the eating habits of people for whom the food identified as being within the diet is plentiful and ordinarily available among the Italian population. Owing to custom and cuisine-of-choice, as well as cultural norms.

Even so people with low socioeconomic status were seen to have little cardiovascular benefit from the diet, and the study accounts for the disparity between those of low socioeconomic status and those from an elevated status enjoying those vaunted benefits as a disparity resulting from "different intakes of antioxidants and polyphenols, fatty acids, micronutrients, dietary antioxidant capacity, dietary diversity, organic vegetables and whole grain bread consumption."

Hedging their bets, however, the study authors concede that further investigation is required before anything approaching an absolute link between socioeconomic status and food choices can be made with confidence.

Cameron Whitman/Stocksy

"The cardiovascular benefits associated with the Mediterranean diet in a general population are well known --  Yet for the first time our study has revealed that the socioeconomic position is able to modulate the health advantages linked to Mediterranean diet. In other words, a person from low socioeconomic status who struggles to follow a Mediterranean model, is unlikely to get the same advantages of a person with higher income, despite the fact that they both similarly adhere to the same healthy diet."
Marialaura Bonaccio, researcher at the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention and first author of the study