The Mediterranean diet is the healthiest in the world.

It is impossible to get fat on a diet of lettuce JB, it has no calories. Olive oil is healthy and good for you. You've lived here, what did you see them tucking into alongside the healthy diet?

Thea, I think there's some truth there. If we see some animals, whom are herbivorous, they can also become large... because they eat lots.

they put olive oil on their pizza. and chips in their toasties. neither were healthy. tasty though. lettuce does have calories. just not many. WHO HID MY LETTUCE?

I think in Sg, it's like that too. Seems that Greece has lots in common with the lifestyle here.. lol. And one more thing as a general thing I've noticed; healthier things tend to be more expensive, and all those junk foods come in coupons! For me to take note: To eat more carrots..

Fish is much healthier than meat and much more expensive but luckily I know a vast array of fishermen who like to feed me up. Tea on the other hand is healthier than coffee but double the price in the cafenions. Most of our healthy food falls off trees or comes out of the ground, but I have spent a small fortune on lettuce this year. I expect most of your food comes from shops Zed as you're in the vibrant city, so is going to be more expensive, and I can well imagine that imported figs cost far more than imported fast food.

Hi zed, I was being a bit tongue in cheek but it really is true that since our diet was declared healthy then anything Greek goes, so less of the salads and more of the souvlakis, less of the fresh veg and more of the fried veg. Things like meat were a luxury once and a meat meal now tends to comprise meat and potatoes, or meat and spagehtti. The fish which is much healthier is oftentimes too expensive even though the taverans sit by the sea. Good point about eating late - that is a given out here, 9pm in winter and 10 pm in summer. So you can still tuck in at the Mediterranean restaurants but just try to avoid having half a pig as your main course.

Hi deebomb, luckily we've not been suckered into the fast food culture over here so that's not a Greek issue but I didn't know that's how they've been operating. Why was it done that way, to increase the price or because people wanted more rehydrated slop along with their sugar drinks? Or maybe competition as you have lots of chains now alongside McDonalds I think. As people grow in size they presumably get used to the larger servings. I never actually understand that as find a large plate of food offputting so if I'm ordering out and I know it's going to be a big hunk of meat in red sauce I'll order a half portion, otherwise I would feel guilty leaving half and the Greek mama would be coming out to the kitchen demanding to know what was wrong with the food.

I believe it was squid and it was hockey. I just keep thinking that either would taste like rubber

Hi Zeph, didn't we have another encounter over squid treated appalingly at a football game, or was it an octopus. Personally I prefer eating octopus to squid, in fact grilled it is most delicious whilst more place tend to serve battered fried squid these days, which explains the expanding waist lines. Our version of McDonald's which is Goodeys does indeed offer squid which is a more popular seller than one of their club sandwiches, but could well fool a foreigner looking at the picture board into thinking they were getting a nice plate of onion rings.

Hi Vandana, thank you for noticing my post crossing - indeed you've been the only one. Greek food has many vegetarian dishes to offer, but you must never tell anyone you are a vegetarian as they don't understand it and will bring you a nice big plate of lamb and explain why it isn't actually meat. But if you don't actually mention it there are lots of vegetarian dishes to choose from. I don't know if you eat fish though. There is no spices used at all so you'd have to take your sour flavour by adding lemon to everything which they do anyway, and settling for dishes with garlic in for any hope of pungency. However there are many tasty vegetable dishes, briam is famous and is just Mediterranean vegetables such as aubergines,tomatoes,onions and courgettes roasted in olive oil. You'd probably enjoy black eyed beans in spinach, lots of choices of beans, spinach pies, cheese pies, salads, cheeses in olive oil, and lots of different ways with fresh vegetables of aubergines, artichokes, wild xorta, plus exclusive Greek dips for the bread. If you want to make the dishes with more flavour though you'd need to cook them at home. If you include fish though you have a wealth of excellent food to choose from, not forgetting the fresh fruits.

Vandana, I laid out a delightful selection of vegetarian dishes for you above, I said you'd only get lamb if you go round telling people you are a vegeterian. If you need the pungeny you'll have to do what I do and take a jar of something in you bag to add as an addition, like a nice jar of pickles. You could also choose pickled olives stuffed with hot things, like peppers.

Hi thea, Forgive them for they know not what they do. LOL. I think they thought you were already accustomed to such congratulations by now, having crossed 3 ot those milestones previously. :) But I am terrified of your definition of vegetarian! Lamb is vegetarian! Actually, the reason I cant seem to travel is I wont get anything to my liking! One of our family friends visited Europe some 25 odd years ago. By the time she returned, she was famished, pale, and extremely weak. When asked she told us, she could only eat bread, cheese, butter and milk for three weeks! Now, that is a tough ask for me - I cant eat two consecutive meals without something pungent. I can eat eggs, but I dont go anywhere near fish, prawns, poultry (except eggs), and of course, your vegetarian dish, the lamb. LOL. So let me explain in a language you all can understand. I eat only the varieties from Plant Kingdom. :)

Hi Lou, well just think of the extra weight as something to keep you warn in the winter instead of using heating. Let me know if it works and I'll try it myself next year but everyone seems to have expressed a doubt that it would actually work as a winter warmer and it could be tremendously difficult for me to manage in the first place. The Chinese were always lithe until they were introduced to the Western diet and the foods which had prevously been not readily available became so. I was always amazed at the amount of fat they were prepared to eat on the meat but it used to be a sign of prosperity, but obviously in much smaller amounts. It is really only the westernised version of Chinese food which is the problem but the steamed dim sum and fish will always be healthy in themselves. But I know many Chinese people who were lured into the American fast food culture which hit Britain, with obvious results.

That makes sense, as nearly all meats are quite fatty.

i so miss her.she was such a nice lady. and i miss the baklava too heh

That would be the smell of a mamma's kitchen

I never touch the stuff. Unlike chocolate or other sweet treats there's no getting away from the fact that baclava is nothing more than an edible coronary. It is good though but so sticky. I stick with bougatsas these days but only as a treat in town when the ice cream season is over.

I think waters about 2.5 litres a day at the most

I would try it 'if' i liked the way it looked, lol.

Hi Aunty, well my diet isn't typically Greek as I don't cook that at home, except mousakkas which I love. That's just basically like a lasagne but fried aubergines are used instead of the pasta, and the topping is full of cheese with some cinnamon in. wonder if you'd take to one of my local favourites though, grilled octopus.

Hi Marti, all that is true indeed but I've never heard of anyone getting fat on oranges. I don't think I made my point terribly well though, although we have access to such healthy foods in our diet because things like souvlaki are Greek the locals seem to be under the impression that it must be healthy, that anything in fact must be healthy if it is Greek or labelled the Mediterranean diet. So the tables swell with plenty of souvlakis made from pork, fried kalamari takes over from fresh cooked kalamari, potatoes are served as a vegetable rather than with a vegetable. And of course the endless bread with everything. I typical taverna portion of meat for one could feed my child and I for two days. There's also the attitude of feed the children up on the things which were not commonplace in Grandma's day, instead of scrabbling round in the weeds for a bit of xorta and having a bit of goats liver on special occasions it's feed them up with meat and fat is a sign of wealth.

I will concur to you then Sandra. The poster above said he lived in Spain but the profile says Japan. He said all the food was fried there now. We don't do much dairy either apart from the daily yogurt, and the cheeses of course. (Will pm you later, short on time).

Hello sandra, now I must confess to adding to my basic salads but what do you expect when I lived off nothing else for four months this year. But nothing like your friend at all, who in their right mind can think that a pork pie is anything but eating a bucket of lard. A find a very simple green salad goes well with tiny new potatoes and mint (and butter). And I prefer my prawns stirred into a spicy mayonaisse mix and added to the salad, rather than neat with lemons, but that's the Lidl frozen ones more often. It never ceases to amaze me the lack of fresh prawns when living by the sea. I'm glad you came along, a poster on the first page said that I think 75% of Spaniards are now overweight, is that really what you see there, it suprised me, as our basic diet is about the same but just cooked differently. I do prefer your tapas though to our mezzes which more recently are turning out deep fried at every turn.

Hello again. I certainly don't see very many overweight Spaniards, although the Mamas tend to fill out a bit as they get older. Frying and dairy don't figure that much in the Spanish diet, which probably explains why the Spanish aren't spreading like the Greeks.

Hi Malpoa, I thought life expectancy was better in Japan, but maybe that was before they were introduced to Western junk food. It's very rare to see overweight old people here, it's the other generations where it is starting to show. The point really was that because the Greeks have been told their diet is so healthy they are eating a lot more of the unhealthy bits because it is part of their general diet. Things like meat weren't readily available in the past, only when a goat of chicken was slaughtered for instance, but now like everywhere else they can buy it at the butchers and they eat huge amounts of fatty pork. The avatar should hopefully be losing some weight this month as he works hard picking the olives but he's a typical example, never walks anywhere, eats all the wrong foods from the healthy diet available, and is most likely to suffer from the strain of the excess weight. At the other end of the scale you've got grandmas feeding up the little darlings as they didn't have the chance to eat like this in the old days.

Thank you Malpoa, what nice things to say. I think I simply don't eat unless I'm hungry and don't like junk food. The older generations feeding up the youngsters is an expression of love with little thought for health. They see overweight as a sign of wealth I think as they associate thinness with poverty. They are always trying to feed me up when I don't need to be and the odd one say my son should be bigger whereas he's in perfect health. The ones that are worrying are the children who at the same age are already too overweight to run or join in sports easily.

You are an exception, perfectly in shape!!! looks a lot younger too...same with your son! hmm I guessed the reason for fattening to be meat. it is funny that grand parents are feeding their grandchildren like that!!! whenever i ring up my grandmother the first thing she asks me is whether I had something!!!! after a days journey, when I reach home, she asks...havent you eaten anything since morning??? during my stay, she would pester me to drink milk, and munch on somehting through out the day hi hi I havent tasted any of your meat preparation...I have only seen them beeing fried in lots of oil...

Hi Shirly, there's a big difference in the results though from a huge portion of salad and a huge portion of fried grease. I never like to be faced with an oversized plate of food as think it looks rude to leave it but don't want to eat it all, when there's too much it never seems to get any smaller. Which is why I prefer lots of dishes in the middle to choose a bit from, rather than a full plate of pig. Also I think that if one is inclined to eat huge portions then one is definitely more likely to be sedentary afterwards as the feeling of being stuffed isn't a pleasant one. I think a lot of people round here will be losing a few kilos round about now, with the olive picking in process.

Hi madteaparty, you've confuesed me. I thought you may have replied that the Japanese diet is healthier which in its original form is probably true, and you say on your profile you live in Japan. I didn't know that Spain had such a problem with weight, I must check that with Sandra. I've noticed too a tendencey here to fry much more of the mezzes than they used to and it really isn't the same as before they used to be so inviting when they weren't fried. Our mezzes are quite like Spanish tapas, but I prefer tapas.