Acquista Angelo - The Mediterranean prescription: meal plans and recipes to help you stay slim and healthy for the rest of your life

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WHEN I WAS A YOUNG COLLEGE STUDENT IN NEW YORK , my father introduced me to a wise, older doctor named Dr. Peter Saita. He was a Sicilian internist who practiced in downtown Manhattan and over time became somewhat of a mentor to me. He used to tell me that being a doctor was the noblest profession, and it was he who inspired me to go to medical school. I kept up my relationship with him throughout medical school and would often accompany him to see patients. He would tell me, The best thing I can do for my patients is to get them to stop smoking and to help them lose weight. This was in the 1970s, when people didnt really pay attention to these issues. He personally saw the connection between being overweight and poor health among his patients and took it upon himself to help those at risk. As a result, he developed a diet that he would describe briefly to his overweight patients, so easy to follow that he didnt even have to write it down, that he saw work over and over. He handed this down to me, a newly graduated doctor, and I never forgot itin part because I had so much respect for this man, but mostly because, as I eventually found again and again with my own patients, it worked.

Years ago as I was starting out as a physician, I tried to help patients lose weight in a more traditional way. I used to tell them how to eat healthily, would give them papers on nutrition, and would refer them to nutritionists, but they werent losing weight. In my frustration, I tried telling them about Dr. Saitas diet. I said, Why dont you try this very simple diet? They would come back to me for a follow-up telling me, I tried the diet, but its difficult. I cant stick to it. I noticed that my American patients didnt have the devotion to food that was found in the Italian culture I grew up in. When I told them the diet included all-you-can-eat fish and chicken entres, they thought fish had to mean salmon or tuna, when there are so many kinds of fish out there. They also didnt know how to cook it, nor did they have healthy, flavorful recipes for chicken. So I took the time to help them lose weight by writing recipes down on my prescription pad to get them started. I would say, Look, its not hard. You just have to be creative. Here, try these, and Id scribble a couple of fish or chicken recipes down for them, based on my and my mothers Sicilian recipes. And miraculously, my patients started losing weight. They couldnt believe the easy and delicious meals they could eat while they were losing weight.

Initially, I would prescribe the diet to patients who had illnesses that had clear connections to being overweight, such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes (as opposed to type 1, which youre born with), and sleep apnea. As my medical practice continued, however, it became apparent how much being overweight set the stage for untold numbers of illnesses and diseases, and how important it was to lose weight as preventive medicine.

My patient profile is no different from the patient population of doctors offices around the country. My new patients are coming in increasingly heavier, and the illnesses related to being overweight and obese are becoming much more frequent. The weight of Americans has been rising at an astonishing rate since the early 1960s due to a combination of diet, meal size, activity habits, genetics, and food industry and media influence. As most people know by now, either by reading statistics or by just glancing around themselves at a crowded location, around two-thirds of our citizens are either overweight or obese. And there appears to be every indication that this trend will continue. Not coincidentally, the United States is in the midst of major epidemics of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, cancer, type 2 diabetes, and hepatitis. These conditions are all clearly exacerbated, if not caused, by excess weight and are major causes of disability and death in this nation. They also account for a significant amount of our health care dollars.