Bmc Med
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Editorial Comment Randomized Controlled Trial
Benefits of the Mediterranean diet beyond the Mediterranean Sea and beyond food patterns.
Abundant and growing evidence has accrued to demonstrate that the traditional Mediterranean diet is likely to be the ideal dietary pattern for the prevention of cardiovascular disease. A landmark randomized trial (PREDIMED) together with many well-conducted long-term observational prospective cohort studies support this causal effect. A new, large British cohort study by Tong et al. assessing the association between adherence to the Mediterranean diet and cardiovascular disease was recently published in BMC Medicine. ⋯ These findings support the transferability of this dietary pattern beyond the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The authors provided measures of population impact in cardiovascular prevention and estimated that 19,375 cases of cardiovascular death would be prevented each year in the UK by promoting the Mediterranean Diet. Please see related article: http://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-016-0677-4 .