Benefits, food list and recipes

The Atlantic diet made headlines around the world when a new study showed that people following the diet lost several inches around their waistline. 

The study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, demonstrated that the group who followed the diet reduced their risk of metabolic syndrome by a third in just six months. 

Metabolic syndrome is made up of five key health risks including high blood sugar, high blood pressure and a large waistline. Untreated it can lead to diabetes, heart disease and stroke. 

Experts rushed to explain the new diet on the block, but fundamentally the Atlantic diet is best understood as a cousin of the much-studied and much-lauded Mediterranean diet. It shares many of the key elements, with some notable differences too. Read on for everything you need to know. Or skip straight to the five-day Atlantic diet plan and recipes

Although the name suggests that the diet covers a vast oceanic area, the Atlantic diet is focused on quite a specific region:  the traditional cuisine of Northern Portugal and Galicia, a region in north-west Spain.

Like the Mediterranean diet, the Atlantic diet emphasises:

• Fresh seasonal vegetables
• Three or four portions of fish a week
• Communal eating and traditional cooking methods
• Starchy carbohydrates such as potatoes
• Red meat including pork and beef
• Cod, dairy and brassica vegetables such as broccoli

“The Atlantic Diet focuses on seafood, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and healthy fats, mirroring the most studied diet in the world, the Mediterranean diet, but with a focus on brassica vegetables like kale and cabbage and other starchy carbs like potato and bread too, “ says Nichola Ludlam-Raine, a dietitian and the author of forthcoming book How Not To Eat Ultra-Processed. 

With the focus on cod, potatoes and broccoli, the ingredients will feel familiar to many in Britain. 

“It resembles a UK diet, or at least foods that can be produced far more readily in the UK than some of the Mediterranean diet foods,” says Richard Hoffman, an associate lecturer in nutrition at the University of Hertfordshire.   

Including potatoes, pork and dairy may come as a surprise to some people, as these foods are not generally considered healthy. But the key difference  is how they are cooked and eaten. Whereas in the UK pork is often consumed as bacon or a grilled pork chop, in the Atlantic diet it is more likely to be cooked in a stew. 

“People forget that the main carcinogens in red meat are produced during the cooking process when it’s been grilled, fried or barbecued at high temperatures and these are linked to cancer and Type 2 diabetes,” notes Hoffman. “But in a stew, you might brown the meat a little, but then you cook it with olive oil, onions, rosemary and garlic which are all antioxidants and these inhibit the inflammatory markers.” 

Similarly, potatoes are often consumed in vegetable soups or baked with their skins, rather than served as chips or mash, which reduces their impact on our blood sugar. “When you eat a vegetable soup you’re consuming all the nutrients as well, whereas the old fashioned way of cooking vegetables in the UK where you boil them and throw away the water means that all the nutrients are being thrown away as well.” 

Dairy is often made from sheep and goat’s milk which can be easier to digest and many varieties of cheese and yogurt contain bacteria which benefit our gut health. 

“We can tend to demonise foods like dairy, red meat and potatoes, but we’re not talking about Mcdonald’s Flurries here,” says Dominique Ludwig, a nutritionist. “The yogurt is fermented and has live probiotics, pork is a great source of protein and zinc, and potatoes are a lovely natural unprocessed food with fibre in their skins and potassium and vitamin C. 

“Carbs are not the enemy, we just need to eat them in proportion, they should be around a quarter of your plate.”