The table that keeps hearts alive

The fourth month's body letters are about the table. We begin with the most studied way of eating on earth.

In 1958 an American physiologist named Ancel Keys began following twelve thousand men in seven countries, from Finland to Japan, to find out why heart disease killed so many in some places and so few in others. The Seven Countries Study ran for decades. The men on the island of Crete, eating olive oil, vegetables, beans, bread, fish, a little cheese, wine with meals, and very little meat, had the lowest rates of heart disease anyone had measured. Keys moved to Italy and lived to a hundred.

Half a century later a Spanish trial called PREDIMED tested the pattern directly: seven thousand people at high risk of heart disease, assigned either to a Mediterranean diet with extra olive oil or nuts, or to a low-fat diet. The Mediterranean groups had about thirty percent fewer heart attacks, strokes and cardiac deaths. The trial was published in 2013, retracted over a flaw in how some people were assigned, re-analyzed, and republished in 2018 with the same conclusion.

What the Mediterranean pattern is: mostly plants, olive oil as the main fat, fish and beans for protein, whole grains, nuts, fruit for dessert, and meat as an occasional thing rather than the center of the plate. Meals eaten slowly, with others, often with a glass of wine. What it isn't: a diet with rules. It's a way of eating that whole cultures have done for centuries, which is why it's sustainable where diets aren't.

It opens the Meaning chamber's body letters because meals are where meaning and body meet. A table is a practice. The Cretans didn't eat for their hearts. They ate for their families, slowly, outdoors, and their hearts came along.