The Atlantic/GALIAT & Mediterranean Diets

Introduction

Last week we looked at The Atlantic Diet. We noted that so many countries border the Atlantic Ocean, there can be no ‘Atlantic Diet’. A “Southern European Atlantic Diet” appears to have been first reported in academic literature in July 2010 (Ref 1). That paper described the Southern European Atlantic Diet (SEAD) as the traditional diet of Northern Portugal and Galicia, a region in northwest Spain.

The GALIAT trial was registered in March 2015. GALIAT is an abbreviation for Galicia Alimentación Atlántica (Galicia Atlantic Diet). The Atlantic Diet would more accurately be called the GALIAT diet or the SEAD. It’s (allegedly) the diet of the Northern Portugal and Galicia region. The article about the GALIAT trial protocol is here (2016) (Ref 2).

The Atlantic Diet paper that we looked at last week was published by a team of researchers from Spain (Ref 3). That’s the home of the main trial involving The Mediterranean Diet, which was called PREDIMED (Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea – prevention with a Mediterranean Diet). Let’s call them the GALIAT diet and the MedDiet from now on. Are these fundamentally different diets? Is one healthier than the other? Let’s take a look…