When the news came out that the famous study PREDIMED was retracted, honestly I didn’t blink an eye. Not because I didn’t think it was true, but because even if it was, it would not change much.

Back in 2013, I was the health editor for Olive Oil Times. I saw the study but had not yet started writing about it. My editor then sent me an email and told me that the New York Times wrote about it and so I wrote about it as well and it was covered by all the top newspapers and websites. It was huge. It basically showed that people who followed a Mediterranean diet who were at high risk for heart disease had 30% less cardiovascular incidents compared to those who followed a low fat diet. For me it was not completely clear why this particular study gained so much attention. There were after all, hundreds of other studies on the Mediterranean Diet before this one which showed its benefits not only for cardiovascular disease, but also for cancer, depression and cognitive disorders. (more…)