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Clinician Article

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Systematic Review of the Mediterranean Diet for Long-Term Weight Loss.

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• Mancini JG
• Filion KB
• Atallah R
• Eisenberg MJ

Read abstract Read evidence summary

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Clinical Comments

General Internal Medicine-Primary Care(US)

The health benefits of the Mediterranean Diet are well known, though many individuals also use weight loss as a reason why a diet is modified. This study provides evidence showing the limitation of Mediterranean diet if used for weight loss alone, but also reinforces the other health benefits of adhering to it. Ultimately, when counseling patients about obesity, weight loss is only one part of the puzzle.

General Internal Medicine-Primary Care(US)

As a Primary care physician, I can tell my patients that the Mediterranean diet can be used as part of weight loss diet and it is as effective as other diets but may have additional cardiovascular benefit based on PREDIMED data described in the discussion. Inability to pool the data is a significant draw back.

Public Health

I'm not sure how much this paper really adds to our knowledge. Most clinicians are aware of the large Spanish RCT that showed that a Mediterranean diet was associated with lower CAD rates. Since the Look Ahead long term f/u didn't show any benefit in terms of CAD, I'm not sure how important these findings are. If weight loss per se isn't associated with reduced CAD risk long term, then why should we care about the individual types of diets used. It seems to me that the Mediterranean diet has the best data for influencing the long term outcomes that many clinicians (and perhaps many patients) care about.

Public Health

This is a valuable review of how the Mediterranean diet is similar (amount of weight lost and kept off at 12 or more months) and perhaps different (glycemic control in type 2 diabetes) from other well-known diets.

Special Interest - Obesity -- Physician

No matter that weight loss depends on calories, not on food type. Food choices are an important part of the dietary advice as far as CV events are considered, and the study does not include events but merely CV risk factors.

Special Interest - Obesity -- Physician

As a general practitioner, it is relevant to learn that a systematic review had been designed to examine the long-term (12 months) effect of the Mediterranean diet on weight loss and cardiovascular risk factor levels among overweight and obese individuals trying to lose weight. The study found that the Mediterranean diet is more efficacious for 12-month weight loss compared with low-fat diets, but not compared with other comparator diets.