Research
Macro partitioning
A Mediterranean-style diet reduces the risk of stroke in high-risk individuals, but does not significantly reduce total mortality or myocardial infarction compared to a low-fat diet.
If you are at high risk for heart disease, a Mediterranean diet supplemented with olive oil or nuts can significantly lower your risk of stroke. While it may not prevent heart attacks or death in all cases, the protection against stroke is a critical health benefit.
ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Low-quality evidence shows little or no effect of the PREDIMED... intervention... on CVD mortality... or total mortality... There was, however, a reduction in the number of strokes with the PREDIMED intervention (HR 0.60, 95% CI 0.45 to 0.80)
Why this rating
Moderate quality for stroke reduction, low quality for mortality/MI.
Source
Mediterranean-style diet for the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease
Karen Rees et al. · Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews · 2019
DOI 10.1002/14651858.cd009825.pub3
Meta-analysis · 30 studiesCited 391×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Adherence to a Mediterranean-style diet significantly reduces systolic and diastolic blood pressure in adults without established cardiovascular disease (primary prevention).Moderate
- In patients with established cardiovascular disease (secondary prevention), a Mediterranean-style diet reduces CVD mortality and total mortality compared to usual care.Limited
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