Going Mediterranean

Staff writer Randi Sherman prepares turkey Bolognese with whole wheat rigatoni and marinated zucchini, staples of the Mediterranean diet. Photos by Michael Datikash

by Randi Sherman
Staff Writer

I’ve never been a culinary genius. In high school, when my mother wasn’t home to cook meals for dinner, my younger sister, a culinary arts student, would do the cooking for us. When I began living in the dorms at college, cooking meant making pasta with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese or a chicken cutlet for dinner.
So when I was assigned to follow the Mediterranean diet for two weeks, which would require cooking meals for both lunch and dinner almost every day, I did, to say the least, find it a bit daunting.
Recent studies reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine have linked the diet to a lower risk of cancer deaths, and a research team from the University of Crete has

found that pregnant women who follow the diet give birth to children far less likely to suffer from allergies and asthma. The idea behind the Mediterranean diet is to take cues from our friends to the east, in countries like Spain, Italy and Greece, and eat as they do. This means keeping red meat to a minimum or eliminating it all together, and filling your diet with loads of vegetables and fruits, eating fish high in omega-3 fatty acids, and cooking with olive oil, garlic, onions and lots of whole grains. Following the diet for a long period of time has been proven to help fight diabetes, ease high blood pressure, and lower LDL cholesterol levels while raising HDL levels.
Before jumping into my kitchen, measuring cups, stirring spoons, pots and pans, slicers and dicers in hand, I figured it would be a good idea to contact a nutritionist, and buy a couple of books to help sort everything out. What should I be doing, and what should I expect to happen?
Shani Goldner, an Orthodox registered dietician in Brooklyn, was happy to answer my multitude of questions.
“People who follow the Mediterranean diet see a marked difference in their cholesterol profile, since good quality fats improve the overall cholesterol ratio,” Goldner said. After only two weeks, however, cholesterol won’t be greatly affected, since lowering cholesterol is a slower process. “What you might see are better levels of energy, and the good volume of food the diet provides will fill you up.”
The cookbook I bought to help guide my eating in the right direction, “The Low Fat Mediterranean Diet” by Anne Sheasby, doesn’t follow the laws of kashrut, so I had some substitutions to make. And while the book offered many recipes for appetizers, salads and soups, side dishes, main courses and desserts, it didn’t offer ideas about what to eat at lunchtime. Goldner suggested having salmon and salad, or lean meat sandwiches on whole grain bread, along with fruit and vegetables.
Israel is located on the Mediterranean, so should I just eat like our brethren in the Holy Land?
“Israelis eat lots of salad and whole grains but they don’t have the health benefits as far as the Italians do,” Goldner said because they don’t consume the amounts of olive oil and omega-3 acids Italians do. “They do a lot of exercise, walking to the buses, training for army service. They also eat a much bigger lunch and a lighter dinner, which is healthier because their calorie intake isn’t as high when the metabolism slows down at night.”
With all this new information in mind, and armed with my cookbook, I went grocery shopping. My first thoughts: I think the key to losing weight on this diet is carrying all the produce, the whole grains and the bottles of olive oil and groceries up and down, first subway stairs, and then apartment building stairs. Shopping for the two weeks, I filled 17 bags of groceries. It’s a good thing I had company that weekend to help me schlep everything around, or else the groceries and I would never have made it home.
Putting away the groceries, my refrigerator and freezer were more packed with food — vegetables, meat, fish and fresh herbs — than they ever have been or probably ever will be again.
Here’s my menu for Day One: apple cinnamon oatmeal with fresh blueberries and hot chocolate for breakfast; thinly sliced chicken cutlet with tomato spread on whole grain bread and baby carrots for lunch and a blood orange for a snack; dinner was turkey Bolognese with whole-wheat rigatoni — my first kitchen-intensive experience.
My kitchen has never seen more action. I ran all over it, peeling and chopping. That night I learned that as a concept, cooking time is as fluid as chicken broth, which can be substituted for chicken stock in a pinch. At 8:15 p.m., after cooking for a solid hour and 45 minutes, I’m starving, and apparently I’m NOT the culinary dunce I thought I was.
I really like oatmeal, especially with blueberries, so I had it for breakfast almost every day, sometimes switching to Kellogg’s Special K cereal. Most days also included yogurt with breakfast for dairy intake, and some sort of exercise, usually a 30-minute to one-hour walk or a 45-minute cardio and strength-training class at the gym.
Day Two of the diet was a Tuesday, the day The Jewish Week’s editorial and production staffs stay late at the office to put the paper together. Dinner is ordered in for us from one of a few kosher restaurants. Knowing that the dairy restaurant delivering that night usually sends along chocolate-filled croissants, which I’d eagerly gobble up any other time, I brought along chocolate pudding from home so I wouldn’t feel deprived of my choco-fix.
On Days Three and Four, around 4 p.m., my body crashed. A wave of hunger and exhaustion hit me and I had to go home and eat immediately. After talking to the dietician, I learned I needed to be eating more grains and fruit, and more fat during the day as well. I urge anyone thinking about adopting the diet to talk at length with a nutritionist so this doesn’t happen.
Other recipes I successfully added to my repertoire include Italian chicken casserole, made with onions, red peppers and cannellini beans; summer minestrone soup, made with two types of zucchini and potatoes; arugula, pear and parmesan salad; oven-baked tilapia Provencal; roasted mahi mahi with garlic and thyme; marinated zucchini and Greek lemon potatoes.
The literature on the Mediterranean diet says to avoid most prepared baked goods, and to indulge in sweets only on special occasions. It just so happened that the final day of my diet fell on my birthday. To treat myself, in honor of my birthday and two weeks of healthy eating and culinary experimentation, I rewarded myself with a red velvet cupcake from my favorite bakery.
After two weeks, I feel more energetic and I’ve lost two pounds, on the low side according to Goldner. But the focus of this diet isn’t weight loss, it’s general health.
“If you actually want to see the health benefits, you need to follow the diet for at least two months,” she said. “Only diabetics will see a real difference right away, lowered blood sugar in about three days.”
Goldner said the diet can help anyone, from people with high cholesterol or diabetes to pregnant women, cancer patients and people with macular degeneration, a degenerative eye disease. “Whatever your health situation, everybody could benefit from this diet,” Goldner said.
The Mediterranean diet allowed me to eat my way to a healthier body, and hone my culinary talents simultaneously. The down side? I’m still washing those pots and pans and slicers and dicers, and yes, those measuring cups and stirring spoons.