The notion of the Mediterranean Diet has undergone a progressive evolution over the past 50 years – from a healthy dietary pattern to a new model of sustainable diet.
This paper presents the Med Diet 4.0 as a comprehensive sustainable Mediterranean diet model, in which three additional sustainable dimensions - environmental, socio-cultural and economic - are incorporated and valorized together with its well documented health and nutrition benefits.
There is increasing evidence of the multiple effects of diets on public health nutrition, society and environment. Sustainability and food security are closely inter-related. The traditional Mediterranean diet (MD) is recognized as a healthier dietary pattern with a lower environmental impact. As a case study, the MD may guide innovative inter-sectorial efforts to counteract the degradation of ecosystems and loss of biodiversity and homogeneity of diets due to globalization, through the improvement of sustainable healthy dietary patterns.
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