I’m using my fitness pal to track food intake, since trying to eat Mediterranean my fat % has increased and carb decreased.

MFP suggests 50\30\20 carb\fat\protein

I think I’m eating well, is it usual for a Mediterranean style to be higher in fat.

Could you provide some greater detail? What does an average day look like? What are you actually eating?

Bacon and 2 eggs on 1 piece of toast
Oats yoghurt dates and almond

Chicken and salad

Some blue cheese snack

Marinara and small serve rice

Coffee and milk
Chocolate
Peanut butter and honey on crackers

Not sure how truly mediterranean that is! Eat a rainbow! Not a lot of veg? Have you bought The Clever Guts book? Lots of dietary recommendations there and recipes.

The Mediterranean diet focusses on vegetables and salads, oily fish and other seafood, beans and lentils, live dairy (inc. sheep and goats), outdoor reared/ pastured/ free range meats, certain nuts and seeds, extra virgin olive oil.

In the Mediterranean quality coffee and chocolate are strong and dark. Healthy fats are eaten at most meals and snacks, but portion size is often modest. Ditto meat serving sizes are small: depending on the region key protein sources are cheeses, fish and other seafood.

Lose the peanut butter and crackers, reduce meat to max once daily.

thx, 7275, good summary, rice crackers and peanut butter were my one obvious indulgence, I tried almond butter, was ok but wasn’t the same.

Teven: The sample day isn’t varied, balanced or rich in essential nutrients. Definitely an improvement over the standard US/ UK diet but not obviously Mediterranean. Work in progress! 🙂

In terms of bang for buck/ calories for nutrients the indulgences are bacon, peanut butter, rice crackers, dates, chicken. Maybe also chocolate, toast, rice depending on the form.

Nuts and seeds farmed or eaten in the Mediterranean and Middle East include walnuts, almonds, tahini/ sesame seed paste, flax or linseeds (must be ground to release nutrients). Other healthy fats from olives, avocados and oily fish.

I also include soaked hazelnuts or filberts and hazelnut butter, because these fit with my North European ancestry and have a decent fatty acid profile. Nut butters tend to be oily or tasteless without salt or sugar, so I use as an ingredient only (salad dressings/ stir fry sauce).

Crunchy alternatives to rice crackers for spreads or dips include skin-on apple or pear slices, raw vegetable crudites (bell peppers/ caulifliower florets/ sprouting broccoli/ baby corn/ sugarsnap peas/ carrot/ asparagus), whole rye crispbreads or oatcakes. There is a recipe for grain-free nut and seed crackers in the CG book.

Chopped nuts or seed butters are standard ingredients in blue cheese dip/ spread and houmous.

HTH!

Hi Firefox7275

I am just wondering what your ancestry has to do with the food you eat. I’ve never come across this before and am intrigued 🙂

The theory is that there are pre-historic genetic adaptations to the human genome. Or to put it another way humans adapted to their very different environments..(compare say Eskimos to African tribes) so the balance and nature of a “good diet” depends in part on the diet and environment that your genetic predecessors bequeathed to you. If you are interested there is lots about this in Tim Spector’s Diet Myth

Thanks Graham, I will have a read 🙂

Ivy22: evolution or selective adaptation of humans and our gut flora over thousands or millions of years. An example would be the ability to digest lactose (milk sugar) into adulthood. This is common in Europeans but uncommon in East Asians, where many are lactose intolerant. This is believed to be because dairy farming was widespread in Europe from the Neolithic (late stone age), but not in East Asia.

Ivy22: it also seems that humans are more or less adapted to digesting large amounts of starchy foods, partly dependent on the number of copies of the amylase (an enzyme) gene. It is believed farming of certain grains originated in the Middle East but spread to the Mediterranean and Europe thereafter.

Of course, we cannot know our full genetic history, nor eat many of the plants available to our ancestors. Habitats have altered and selective breeding altered many from the ‘wild type’ beyond all recognition!

Ivy22: I combined reading about archaeology and diet (purely amateur interest) with my existing knowledge on nutrition/ dietetics (prior qualifications and employment) to decide which foods to eat more of.

As GrahamSPhillips says Prof. Tim Spector’s book is excellent, as is the ‘Human Food Project’ blog if you want to read more about the gut microbiome.

That’s really interesting, I’ll definitely be reading more, thanks 🙂