(NEW YORK) -- Could switching to a Mediterranean-style diet that
emphasizes fruits, vegetables, fish, olive oil and nuts, help
reduce your risk of heart attacks, strokes and heart-related
deaths? A new study out Monday in the New England Journal of
Medicine suggests it could. Researchers in Spain looked at over
7,000 patients who did not have heart disease but were at high
risk. The patients were then put on either a Mediterranean diet
plus olive oil, a Mediterranean diet plus nuts, or a regular
diet with a direction to reduce fat. The study's authors found
that those on the Mediterranean diets had a 30-percent reduction
in cardiovascular events. "The study really is a potential game
changer because it's the first large dietary study in many years
which has looked at disease event outcomes, you know such as
heart attacks or strokes, as opposed to intermediate markers,
such as effects on cholesterol or inflammatory markers in the
blood," says Dr. Eric Zacharias, an assistant clinical professor
at the Universit