Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
For years we’ve been told that if one study proves the Mediterranean diet is the healthiest way to eat, it’s PREDIMED.
Doctors cite it. Dietitians cite it. Influencers have built careers on it.
The headline: Mediterranean diet cuts heart disease by 30%.
So I sat down and opened the actual paper. Not the press release — the supplementary tables, where almost nobody looks.
In today’s video I walk through the trial’s own tables — what that 30% actually means, where it came from, and why I think anyone with blocked arteries should be asking a different question entirely.
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A note on PREDIMED's funding, since it comes up. The trial's public grants came from Spain's Instituto de Salud Carlos III. The extra-virgin olive oil and mixed nuts given to the intervention groups were donated by the olive oil and nut industries — Hojiblanca and Patrimonio Comunal Olivarero, the California Walnut Commission, Borges, and La Morella Nuts. That much is disclosed in the NEJM paper itself.
What's less widely known is in the study protocol, section D.5. It states that additional funds came from food companies in the form of cash and other commodities, including the printing of intervention materials such as recipes. The NEJM funding statement doesn't mention cash contributions, and a 2013 industry press release described the trial as financed entirely with public funds.
I'm not alleging the results were falsified. I'm making a narrower point: the industries with a commercial stake in the outcome supplied the products under test, paid to print the materials that taught participants how to use them, and contributed money — the published disclosure omits. Readers can weigh that as they see fit. The protocol is publicly available alongside the paper at NEJM.org.
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For years we’ve been told that if one study proves the Mediterranean diet is the healthiest way to eat, it’s PREDIMED.
Doctors cite it. Dietitians cite it. Influencers have built careers on it.
The headline: Mediterranean diet cuts heart disease by 30%.
So I sat down and opened the actual paper. Not the press release — the supplementary tables, where almost nobody looks.
In today’s video I walk through the trial’s own tables — what that 30% actually means, where it came from, and why I think anyone with blocked arteries should be asking a different question entirely.
------
A note on PREDIMED's funding, since it comes up. The trial's public grants came from Spain's Instituto de Salud Carlos III. The extra-virgin olive oil and mixed nuts given to the intervention groups were donated by the olive oil and nut industries — Hojiblanca and Patrimonio Comunal Olivarero, the California Walnut Commission, Borges, and La Morella Nuts. That much is disclosed in the NEJM paper itself.
What's less widely known is in the study protocol, section D.5. It states that additional funds came from food companies in the form of cash and other commodities, including the printing of intervention materials such as recipes. The NEJM funding statement doesn't mention cash contributions, and a 2013 industry press release described the trial as financed entirely with public funds.
I'm not alleging the results were falsified. I'm making a narrower point: the industries with a commercial stake in the outcome supplied the products under test, paid to print the materials that taught participants how to use them, and contributed money — the published disclosure omits. Readers can weigh that as they see fit. The protocol is publicly available alongside the paper at NEJM.org.
Subscribe to my Substack (to receive email when I upload):
vegsource.substack.com
O U R W E B S I T E
vegsource.com
