The Mediterranean Zone (9 page)

While the Mediterranean sauce is cooking, preheat a skillet and sauté the veal slices 1 minute per side, or until lightly browned. Add the Mediterranean sauce to the veal and cook for 2 minutes. Season with the salt, pepper, and oregano. Sprinkle with the chopped parsley and serve over the spaghetti squash.

Share an apricot for dessert.

Per serving:
Calories 351, protein 27 g, fat 12 g, carbohydrate 40 g, and fiber 11 g

Yield: 1 serving

Total time: 5 minutes

Ingredients:

Add sliced strawberries to cottage cheese in a bowl. Sprinkle with the almonds.

Per serving:
Calories 104, protein 8 g, fat 3 g, carbohydrate 11 g, and fiber 3 g

Total for Day 6: Calories 1,257, protein 97 g, fat 41 g, carbohydrate 134 g, and fiber 28 g

Yield: 2 servings

Total time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

In a medium bowl, mix the cream cheese with the chopped macadamia nuts, ham, and ⅓ of the strawberries. Spread the mixture on the crackers and have the rest of the strawberries on the side.

Per serving:
Calories 367, protein 28 g, fat 12 g, carbohydrate 39 g, and fiber 10 g

Yield: 2 servings

Total time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

In a skillet over medium heat, combine the onions and artichoke hearts with the vanilla bean and vegetable stock, and cook just until onions start to soften. Remove the vanilla bean.

Steam the fish with the zest of 1 orange for about 8 minutes.

Plate the artichoke heart/onion mixture. Top each plate with the fish. Drizzle with the extra-virgin olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Enjoy an orange per serving for dessert.

Per serving:
Calories 399, protein 29 g, fat 12 g, carbohydrate 50 g, and fiber 22 g

Yield: 1 serving

Total time: 5 minutes

Ingredients:

Stir the whey protein powder into the water. Blend with the berries in a blender. Have the almonds on the side for crunch.

Per serving:
Calories 97, protein 7 g, fat 3 g, carbohydrate 13 g, and fiber 3 g

Yield: 2 servings

Total time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Season the chicken breast with salt and pepper and bake for 15 to 20 minutes. While the chicken is baking, peel and remove the woody parts of the asparagus ends; then chop the spears into 1-inch lengths. Peel the eggplant and cut into ½-inch cubes.

In a saucepan, bring the vegetable stock to a boil, reduce the heat, then add the diced eggplant and chopped asparagus, and cook for 7 minutes. Drain the vegetables, then mash them with the yogurt, chives, salt, and pepper.

Slice the chicken and divide the slices in half.

To serve, divide the vegetables over 2 plates, then top with the chicken slices. Drizzle the extra-virgin olive oil over the chicken and vegetables.

Enjoy 1 cup of blueberries per serving for dessert.

Per serving:
Calories 357, protein 27 g, fat 10 g, carbohydrate 45 g, and fiber 16 g

Yield: 1 serving

Total time: <1 minute

Ingredients:

Pour and enjoy!

Per serving:
Calories 98, protein 6 g, fat 4 g, carbohydrate 8 g, and fiber 0 g

Total for Day 7: Calories 1,318, protein 97 g, fat 41 g, carbohydrate 155 g, and fiber 51 g

LEAN MEATS AND FISH

chicken breast, boneless, skinless

eggs, egg whites

halibut

ham (lean)

lamb loin (lean)

pork (lean)

top round steak (lean)

salmon

sea bass

shrimp

turkey

veal

VEGETABLES

artichoke hearts

asparagus

bell peppers

black olives

broccoli

Brussels sprouts

chives

eggplant

fennel

garlic

green beans

hearts of palm

leeks

mushrooms

onions, red

spaghetti squash

spinach

tomatoes

zucchini

FRUIT

apples

applesauce, unsweetened

apricots

blackberries

blueberries

cherries

grapefruit

kiwis

lemons

oranges

pears

pineapple

raspberries

strawberries

DAIRY

cream cheese, fat-free

Greek yogurt, fat-free

goat cheese

cottage cheese, low-fat

milk, 2%

mozzarella cheese, part-skim

Parmesan

ricotta, part-skim

string (mozzarella) cheese, light

yogurt, plain, low-fat

PANTRY & REFRIGERATOR STAPLES

almonds

basil, fresh

bay leaf, dried

chili powder

cinnamon, ground

hummus

olive oil

olive oil cooking spray

macadamia nuts

marjoram

paprika

parsley

peanut butter, reduced-fat

peppers, bell

preserves, sugar-free

salsa

salt

thyme, ground

chocolate, unsweetened baker’s

vanilla bean

vegetable stock, low-sodium

Wasa fiber crackers

whey protein

wine, red and white

Each of these seven days in the Mediterranean Zone illustrates the Zone Paradox. You are eating a lot of food but not a lot of calories. None of the meals supplies more than 400 calories and every day in the Mediterranean Zone provides less than 1,400 calories, yet you are neither hungry nor fatigued since you are stabilizing blood sugar levels. The maximum protein in any day in the Mediterranean Zone is only slightly less than what average Americans are currently eating, and the fiber content is dramatically greater than the typical American diet. I should also add the total fat content in the Mediterranean Zone never exceeds 50 grams per day, which is considered a low-fat diet. Frankly, who could argue with a diet like that for a lifetime?

A week in the Mediterranean Zone is really only a glimpse into a lifetime in the Mediterranean Zone. You can change meals very simply by making different protein substitutions. For vegetarians, simply take out three ounces of chicken or beef and replace it with three ounces of low-fat cheese, six egg whites, six ounces of extra-firm tofu, or three ounces of a soy imitation-meat product (the last two protein sources are for vegans). Alternatively, you can replace the three ounces of low-fat protein with four and a half ounces of fish or six ounces of a low-fat dairy product. It doesn’t take much effort to quickly make a large cookbook of Mediterranean Zone meals that can fit into any dietary philosophy.

What if you are losing too much fat and you can actually begin to see your abdominal muscles? Then simply take out the late afternoon snack and replace it with another Mediterranean Zone meal or add a handful of nuts to your late afternoon or evening snack.

What if you wanted to the take the Mediterranean Zone to its most extreme,
using only Paleolithic ingredients? Would you get better results? Probably. The only problem with the Mediterranean PaleoZone is potential dietary boredom due to the decreased number of food ingredients you can use: no alcohol, no dairy products (milk or cheese), no legumes, and no grains. This rather draconian approach to the Mediterranean Zone is also difficult to adhere to (the lack of alcohol is usually the primary complaint) for an extended period of time.

Even if you follow a Paleolithic version of the Mediterranean Zone, you still need to supplement your diet with additional omega-3 fatty acids and polyphenols to reduce cellular inflammation to its lowest levels and simultaneously reach the clinical markers that define the Zone. Of course, adding anti-inflammatory supplements also lets you live a little more on the dietary wild side so that you can enjoy an occasional glass of red wine, a cup of cappuccino, or some traditional dark chocolate that contains a little sugar and milk to reduce the bitterness of its high polyphenol content.

How anti-inflammatory supplements work to enhance the foundation of the Mediterranean Zone is discussed in the next chapter.

T
he Mediterranean Zone can be defined as a lifetime eating plan that helps your body maintain your inflammatory response within a healthy range. What makes the Mediterranean diet useful in managing inflammatory responses are ample polyphenols from fruits and vegetables and omega-3 fatty acids from fish coupled with decreased intake of omega-6 and saturated fatty acids.

The Mediterranean Zone enhances the anti-inflammatory control of the Mediterranean diet by giving it more structure, especially in the balance of protein to the glycemic load, to enhance its hormonal responses. But to get the full anti-inflammatory benefits of the Mediterranean Zone you will still probably have to consider supplementing it with additional purified omega-3 fatty acids and purified extracts rich in polyphenols.

Until recently, eating a lot of fish was a relatively easy approach to getting adequate levels of omega-3 fatty acids in the diet. Fish was cheap, and it was safe to eat. Those days are over. Because of technological advances, we
are hunting fish into extinction, and as a result, the cost of fish is skyrocketing. Second, we have been using the oceans as a dumping ground for toxic chemicals that have been accumulating in the fish we eat. The end result of both factors is a decreasing consumption of fish, which means a decreasing intake of anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids.

So just how much omega-3 fatty acids do you need if your goal is to keep yourself in the Zone? I believe you will need a minimum of 2.5 grams of omega-3 fatty acids per day. These are not just any omega-3 fatty acids, but the longer chain omega-3 fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), found only in fish and fish oil concentrates. The average American consumes about 125 mg of EPA and DHA per day, or about 5 percent of my minimum recommended omega-3 fatty acid dose.

It wasn’t always that way. At the turn of the twentieth century, fish consumption was high, and if your grandparents didn’t eat a lot of fish, then your great-grandparents would have given them a daily tablespoon of cod liver oil. While cod liver oil was the most disgusting food known to man (perhaps the only exception would be garum—see previous chapter!), a daily tablespoon of cod liver oil did provide 2.5 grams of EPA and DHA. Unfortunately, cod liver oil today is heavily contaminated with toxins, especially polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Sadly, those toxic chemicals haven’t improved the taste, either.

You could eat more fish to get the minimum levels of EPA and DHA for the Mediterranean Zone, but to get 2.5 grams of EPA and DHA per day, you’d have to eat:

Each of these solutions has some problems. Let’s start with the lobster. It’s expensive, and it also contains virtually no EPA and DHA. People like to eat it because it doesn’t have a fishy taste, but unless you have both an unlimited budget and an unlimited taste for crustaceans, that’s not going to work. Tuna is accessible and affordable, but is contaminated with mercury. In fact, the EPA recommends you eat no more than six ounces of albacore (“white”) tuna or twelve ounces of canned light tuna per week.
Farm-raised salmon is lower in mercury but still high in PCBs. (Sidebar: 95 percent of all salmon consumed is farm-raised. Unfortunately, they are fed crude fish oil rich in PCBs so that the final product you get in a restaurant has five times the levels of PCBs compared to more expensive wild salmon.)

A far better way to ensure you get the necessary 2.5 grams of EPA and DHA per day that your grandparents got when they took their tablespoon of cod liver oil is to use highly purified omega-3 fatty acids that are also free of mercury and extremely low in PCBs.

This is trickier than it looks, because the fat-soluble toxins (PCBs, dioxins, and flame retardants, for example) in fish become concentrated in the crude fish oil when it is extracted. These compounds are known neurotoxins, carcinogens, and endocrine disruptors. This means they cause damage to the nervous system, increase the incidence of cancer, and cause hormonal disruptions, such as making you fat. Consider crude fish oil as the sewer of the sea—a collection vehicle for fat-soluble toxins. Once these toxins enter your body, they go directly to the organs in your body that contain the most fat and stay there. Those target organs are your brain and organs rich in fat cells (primarily your adipose tissue).