In its annual Best Diets ranking, U.S. News and World Report has awarded the top spot to the Mediterranean diet for the seventh year in a row. According to the publication, this style of eating—inspired by the eating habits of people living in the Mediterranean region—has such serious staying power because it’s easy to follow long-term and has been shown to support heart health, bone, and joint health, and help prevent certain diseases, such as diabetes.
But “diet” is really a misnomer, says Maya Feller, MS, RD, CDN, author of Eating From Our Roots and a member of U.S. News and World Report’s Best Diets expert panel. “It's less of a diet, more of a lifestyle, an eating pattern,” she says. “[It] can be customized based on the individual's likes, dislikes, personal preference, religious needs, and access.”
“The Mediterranean diet is really a long-term dietary lifestyle…versus another kind of restrictive time-period diet,” agrees Maggie Berghoff, a functional medicine nurse practitioner and author of Eat to Treat. Rather than cutting out certain food groups or counting calories, “it focuses on [eating] a lot of healthy fats, healthy oils, and plant-based foods,” she says.
