Yes, this really is a breakthrough study

You may have seen coverage of this in the corporate media, but I'm going to give you a bit of value added. A randomized controlled trial finds that the so-called Mediterranean diet results in fewer strokes and heart attacks, not to mention fewer deaths, in people at high risk for heart disease.Now here's why this is a big deal. Most of what we know about nutrition and health comes from observational studies. It's very difficult to sort out the effects of nutrition on human health because, among other problems:People's diets are obviously very complex. You can't easily or convincingly sort out the effect of one dietary component or characteristic from all the other features of diet;People's diets tend to be correlated with all sorts of other facts about them, including socio-economic status, where they live which is associated with all sorts of other exposures, their culture, their consumption of health care and all sorts of health-related behaviors from smoking to physical activity to how often they have sex;There is confounding by indication. People who are overweight, or diabetic, or otherwise have been told by their doctors that they are at risk or believe they are for whatever reason may already be trying to modify their diets.Doing long-term, randomized controlled trials is extremely difficult because people don't stick to the diets they are assigned.These Spanish investigators overcame these problems by, first of all, deliberately selecting people who are at high risk -...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs