Spanish diet is the healthiest on earth – it's official

A MEDITERRANEAN diet has long been hailed as one of the most healthy on earth, even though it is said to be in decline in Spain and is far less likely to be the régime of choice in inland areas, where red meat – including all the fatty bits, and even tripe – are more likely to be served up for the family dinner than grilled fish and salad. But Spaniards are still, statistically, the European race which eats best – in fact, fewer people in Spain die from conditions caused by a poor diet than anywhere else on the continent.

Yet another great reason to up sticks and move to the land of Cervantes and cerveza, along with its beautiful countryside, stunning monuments and mild, sunny climate – albeit the latter seems a distant memory at the moment, with an Arctic front sending temperatures down to around -12ºC inland and an early-morning 4ºC on the coast.

It's no myth – Spain's diet is the best if you want to live long and healthily, and that's a scientific fact; at least, according to extensive research by the Martin-Luther Universität in Halle-Wittenberg and Friedrich Schiller Universität in Jena, both in Germany, carried out over more than a quarter of a century between 1990 and 2016 in every country in Europe recognised as such by the World Health Organisation (WHO), 51 in total.

Over this time, diet, lifestyle, preferences and availability of foodstuffs, along with trends for more international, hitherto lesser-known ingredients and 'superfoods', have changed dramatically, but the results of the research – published in Science Daily – remain constant, according to the team.

The prevalence of cardiovascular illnesses, cancer and type II diabetes, in cases where these are known to have been caused by a poor diet, and deaths therefrom were studied across the continent, and a direct positive correlation has been seen over these 27 years between mortality resulting from diet-related diseases and a low consumption of fruit, vegetables, olive oil, nuts and seeds, and a high consumption of salt, refined sugar, saturated fats and red meat.

This correlation is hardly ground-breaking, but the fact that Spain shows the lowest incidence out of all 51 countries sets in stone what nutritionists have long suspected: that Spanish cuisine is one of those rare phenomena which is good for you as well as being enjoyable.

According to the results of the study, an average of 44,617 people in Spain die every year from conditions directly caused by a bad diet, or health problems which are completely avoidable – typically, fewer than one per 1,000, based upon an almost constant population of between 46 and 47 million over the years in question.

The exact figure comes out at 0.43 per 1,000, very slightly lower than in Israel, which is almost neck-and-neck with Spain for the fewest diet-related deaths.

After Spain and Israel, the healthiest national diets, based upon mortality connected to eating habits by country, are in France, The Netherlands, Andorra, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Norway and Italy, in that order.

Few would have expected Italy to be so far behind Spain, given that the fish-pasta-tomatoes-salad-olives-bread régime is relatively common to both, but Spain also includes vast regional variations, including paella or other rice dishes in the Valencia area and bean stew or fabada in Asturias and Cantabria, for example.

The worst country in the wider European territory for diet is Uzbekistan, the survey says – so, if you're planning a city break in Tashkent, you might want to google 'Spanish restaurants' before you get there to give your arteries some light relief.

In fact, the unhealthy diet 'blacklist' is almost entirely made up of former Soviet republics – after Uzbekistan and in ascending order are Turkmenistan, Kyrgystan, Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan.

And what about the UK? If you're a British resident considering making a south-westerly move of around 1,500 kilometres, this may well persuade you: various research, not just that of the two German universities, says that as many as one in five deaths in the United Kingdom are directly related to poor dietary choices.

Data from 2016 and 2017 show varying figures, but depending upon your source, diet-related deaths worldwide – related to unhealthy food choices, not to famine or food shortages in the third world – ranged from 12% to 19% and, according to a 2016 report by the British Medical Association (BMA), poor dietary choices around the globe contribute to more potentially fatal health conditions than smoking and lack of physical activity combined.

In Britain alone, around 70,000 annual deaths could be prevented just by eating properly, UK government research claimed in January 2008, although with the population increases in northern Europe since then, it is likely this figure will have risen.

Spain already has one of the world's longest life expectancies, with almost 15,000 residents aged 100 or more and, unofficially, 11 residents aged 110 or over.

Recently, British broadsheet The Times questioned why Spain's life expectancy should be the highest in Europe and fourth-highest in the world, far surpassing that of the UK, when Spaniards statistically smoke more and drink more alcohol – albeit more constantly and more in moderation than in northern European nations where weekend 'binge drinking' is a bigger trend.

It concluded that the diet was one of six factors that offset the risks of these bad habits, and Spaniards themselves added another five – a total of 11, but the recent article in Science Daily shows that one of these is factual rather than anecdotal.