The traditional Mediterranean diet comprises foods eaten by people living in olive growing regions of the Mediterranean before the 1960s, notably Crete, the Greek mainland, Spain and Southern Italy. This diet is a feature of the lifestyle of poor people, their climate and hardship at a time before the globalisation of American dietary trends, which introduced the regular consumption of red meat, factory fats, convenience foods and refined sugar. The Mediterranean diet has been associated with a reduced risk of developing cancer, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and diabetes.^1,2

The Palaeolithic Era began 2.6 million years ago and is associated with the use of stone, wood and bone tools. Our species, Homo sapiens, is thought to have appeared some 200,000 years ago in Ethiopia, overtaking the Neanderthal after a volcanic catastrophe in the Mediterranean some 36,000 years ago. We only began to domesticate animals and plants around 10,000 years ago, and by this time our species had also begun fishing and using fire for cooking.