 The heart of a traditional Mediterranean diet, mainly vegetarian, much lower in meat and dairy, and uses fruit for dessert, so no surprise those eating that way. And very low heart disease rates compared to those eating standard Western diets. This landmark study, though, has been decided to suggest that all types of fat, animal or vegetable, was associated with the appearance of new atherosclerotic lesions in our coronary arteries feeding our hearts. But a hundred men were given angiograms of baseline then two years later looking for the development of lesions like this, before and after, all the while monitoring their diets every year. Only about 1 in 20 eating lower fat diets had new lesions, compared to about 8 in 20 on more typical American diets, around 33% or more fat. When they drilled down, though, only three types of fat appeared significantly to increase the likelihood of the appearance of new lesions, loric, oleic, and linoleic. Loric acid is a saturated fat found in coconut oil and palm kernel oil, which is found in junk food, whipped cream, candy bars. Oleic, from the Latin word olium for olive oil, but that's not where these men were getting their oleic acid from. The top sources for Americans are basically cake, chicken, and pork. And linoleic comes mostly from chicken. So the study really just showed that people eating lots of junk, chicken, and pork tended to close off their coronary arteries. To see if major sources of plant fats like olive oil and nuts help or hurt, ideally we do a multi-year, randomized study. We take thousands of people and have 30 nuts, 30 more olive oil, and a third do essentially nothing to see who does better. And that's exactly what was done. The Freddie Med study took thousands of people at high risk for heart disease in Spain who were already eating a Mediterranean-ish diet and randomized them into three groups for a couple of years. One with added extra virgin olive oil, one with added nuts, and a third group that was told to cut down on fat but they didn't, so basically ended up as a no dietary changes control group. What happened to the amount of plaque in their arteries over time? Whereas there was significant worsening of carotid artery thickening and plaque in the no dietary change control group, those in the added nuts group showed a significant reversal in thickening and an arrest in plaque progression. There were no significant changes in the added olive oil group. The richness of the plant-based Mediterranean diets and potentially beneficial foods such fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, whole grains, and olive oil believed to explain its cardio-protective effects. These results suggest that nuts really are a preferable source of fat to olive oil and may delay the progression of atherosclerosis, the harbinger of future cardiovascular events such as stroke, adding nuts appeared to cut the risk of stroke in half. Note though they were still having strokes, half as many strokes so the nuts appeared to be helping, but they were still eating a diet conducive to strokes and heart attacks. All three groups had basically the same heart attack rates, the same overall death rates. That's what Dr. Ornish noted when he wrote in. No significant reduction in the rates of heart attack, death from cardiovascular causes, or death from any cause, just that stroke benefit. But hey, that's something. Mediterranean diets are certainly better than what most people are consuming, but even better may be a diet based on whole plant foods shown to reverse heart disease, not contribute to it. The authors of the study replied that they didn't wish to detract from Ornish's work, noting that Mediterranean plant-based diets actually share a great number of foods in common. Yes, Ornish's diet may reverse heart disease, but the Mediterranean diet proponents argue the major problem with Ornish's diet is that it doesn't taste good, and so hardly anyone sticks to it.