As we mentioned in the other articles, for a healthy person weight loss is simple: burn more calories than you consume. The healthiest weight is determine by height to weight ratio or Body Mass Index (BMI) and the amount of fat in your body. Unfortunately over 60% of the North American population is considered to be overweight, according to the BMI index. There must be something wrong with our diet. In faraway places such as Southern Italy and Greek, most people live longer than us because their diet contains lots of fruits and vegetables. The People in Southern Italy and Greek only eat fish and poultry a few times a week and meat a few times a month. Their diet is high in carbohydrates and only containing 8% of saturated fat.
You can find some very good traditional Greek foods in you local restaurants.
Here are some meals that I found very different than our diet:
1. Savor souvlaki
Also known as shish kebob, it contains a large amount of vegetables and a small amount of meat. This is a meal with an average of about 300 calories and only 10 grams of fat with 1/5 of fat being saturated.
2. Pita Bread sandwich
Pita bread sandwich includes hefty raw vegetable, some meat, feta cheese and cucumber sauce. It contains roughly 800 calories with 45 grams of total fat and half of that are saturated.
Unfortunately, under the influence of western diet, some of the meals that we found is no longer really Greek foods. They are high in meat and saturated fat, therefore please do not assume that all Greek restaurant are original Mediterranean diet.
Here are 2 recipes of original Mediterranean diet that not only helps you to lose weight but also reduces your high blood pressure and bad cholesterol level in result of lowering risk of heart diseases and strokes.
1.Sauce of yoghurt with dill ( Sources from Ellaia)
* Sauce of yoghurt with dill
* 300 gm. yoghurt with low water content
* 1 spoonful dry dill
* 1 clove garlic, salt, pepper
* 2 spoonfuls olive oil ELLAIA
* 1 spoonful lemon juice.
* We pulp the garlic in a mortar with little salt.
In a deep bowl we strike yogurt with garlic, the dill and the pepper and we continue with the olive oil and the lemon until they are mixed well. We maintain the mixture in the refrigerator. Accompanies vegetables and green salad.
2. Meat with plums ( Sources from Ellaia)
* 1,5 kg meat (pork, lamb, beef or even chicken)
* 1 onion
* salt, pepper, nutmeg
* 1 cinnamon stick
* 5-6 clovesjuice of 2 lemons
* 2-3 spoonfuls olive oil ELLAIA
* Half kg plums
* 1 cup almonds
* 2 spoonfuls sugar or honey
* Wash the meat and cut it in portions. We put it in a basin and throw on the onion in big particles, salt, pepper, the cinnamon, cloves, the nutmeg and the juice of lemon. We leave the meat to be marinated for 2-3 hours and meanwhile we wet the plums in water in order to absorb water and also the almonds in order to be peeled easily. We put the olive oil in a saucepan and sauté the meat. We douse with the marinade liquid, we add 1-2 glasses hot water and we boil the meat in low temperature, until it gets soft. We put inside also the plums, the almonds and the honey or the sugar and we leave them to boil for a few minutes.
Finally we will provide you with a Mediterranean diet food list. It contains cheese, eggs, fish and sea food, fruits, grains, legumes, nuts, olive oil, red wine, vegetables and yogurt.
On the top of the pyramid contains meat, poultry and on the lower broader base, there are dairy products, oils, fruits and vegetables.
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