This article is about food of the areas around the Mediterranean Sea. For the dietary recommendation made popular by C. Walter Willett in the 1990 's, see Mediterranean diet.
Mediterranean cuisine is the food of the areas around the Mediterranean Sea. Whether this is a useful category is disputed:
The idea of the ‘standard Mediterranean diet’ ... is a modern construction of food writers and publicists in Western Europe and North America earnestly preaching what is now thought to be a healthy diet to their audiences by invoking a stereotype of the healthy other on the shores of the Mediterranean. Their colleagues in Mediterranean countries are only too willing to perpetuate this myth. The fact of the matter is that the Mediterranean contains varied cultures...[1]
Around 1975, under the impulse of one of those new nutritional directives by which good cooking is too often influenced, the Americans discovered the so-called Mediterranean diet.... The name... even pleased Italian government officials, who made one modification: changing from diet—a word which has always seemed punitive and therefore unpleasant—to Mediterranean cuisine.[2]
Given the geography, these nation-states have influenced each other over time and the cooking evolved into sharing common principles. Mediterranean cuisine is characterized by its flexibility, its range of ingredients and its many regional variations. The terrain has tended to favour the raising of goats and sheep.
Fish dishes are also common, although today much of the fish is imported since the fisheries of the Mediterranean Sea are weak.citation neededSeafood is still prominent in many of the standard recipes.
Olive oil, produced from the olive trees prominent throughout Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Italy, Spain and other Mediterranean nations, adds to the distinctive taste of the food.
It is believed that ingredients in this kind of cooking, especially olive oil, are a major contributor to the longevity of the Mediterranean people.citation needed
Barbecue or grilled meats, pita bread, hummus, and falafel are very popular forms of the eastern type of the cuisine.
^ Sami Zubaida, "National, Communcal and Global Dimensions in Middle Eastern Food Cultures" in Sami Zubaida and Richard Tapper, A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East, London and New York, 1994 and 2000, ISBN 1-86064-603-4.
^ Massimo Alberini, Giorgio Mistretta, Guida all'Italia gastronomica, Touring Club Italiano, 1984, p. 37
