No diet wars, only scientific data in this thread.
No anecdotes.
Must have clinical trials for diet showing benefit short term on hard endpoints or surrogate causal endpoints.
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Is there any doubt? Google AI didn’t feel the need for studies.
The Mediterranean diet is often considered one of the healthiest diets in the world. It’s recommended by American nutrition experts and recognized by the World Health Organization. The diet is based on eating more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts, legumes, olive oil, herbs, and spices, and less red meat, sugar, and saturated fat. [1, 2, 3]
Here are some of the benefits of the Mediterranean diet: [3, 4]
- Heart health: The diet is rich in heart-healthy fats and can reduce the risk of heart disease. [3, 4]
- Brain health: The diet can improve memory and reduce the risk of dementia. [3, 4]
- Bone health: The diet can lead to stronger bones. [3]
- Cancer: The diet can reduce the risk of breast cancer. [3]
- Diabetes: The diet can reduce the risk of diabetes. [3]
- Lifestyle: The diet includes social interactions during meals and exercise. [3]
- Sustainability: The diet is sustainable and has been eaten in the Mediterranean region for centuries. [2]
The Mediterranean diet is more of an eating style than a restricted diet. It’s also considered a piece of human heritage by UNESCO. [3, 5]
Generative AI is experimental.
[2] U.S. News Ranks Mediterranean Diet Best Diet Again - Scripps Health
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/03/health/mediterranean-diet-2023-best-diet-wellness/index.html
[4] https://sunbasket.com/blog/worlds-healthiest-diet-ingredients/
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGYHWJeueCM
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^this
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Here’s a way to do the vegetable part:
Saturated fat seems particularly deleterious, limiting it (from nuts, oil, etc), as long as weight is normal seems good. (I’m thinking about the last 20% optimization, this is not the first thing to do, those are all healthy foods in general).
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The healthiest diet is one made up of foods with highest nutrition to calorie ratio (NCR).
I believe #1 food with highest NCR is watercress. Herbs are very high on the list too like fresh oregano or rosemary, followed by kale, spinach and chard.
Nutrients include macros, fiber, vitamins/minerals, probiotics/prebiotics, phytonutrients/chemicals
Generally Mediterranean diet is best studied but there are plenty of other diets from various cultures that can fit the bill - like Okinawan for example.
Personally I prefer constructing my diet using the NCR and utilizing diet components from all of the world.
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This feels like something Yoda would eat all day inside his hut, watercress.
The artist sees it as getting a diverse microbiome (from land, sea, mountains, forests, jungles, and all different kinds of biomes).
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There’s the CSIRO total wellbeing diet. https://www.totalwellbeingdiet.com/
There should be a fair amount of evidence for it being generally “healthy”, but I will just chuck in a single reference to a five year evaluation looking at weight loss: Journal of Medical Internet Research - Weight Loss and Usage of an Online Commercial Weight Loss Program (the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet Online) Delivered in an Everyday Context: Five-Year Evaluation in a Community Cohort
Well, Yoda did live 900 years… 
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Hello everyone.
I will just add one thing. The Mediterranean diet was healthy, yes. It’s better than the majority yes. But something very important changed in the past decades. Fish 
! Fish nowadays is number one in toxic poluentes. I just got back from a conference and it’s unbelievable the amount of quemicals found in almost if not all fishes. And we even don’t test for other thousands of other quemicals.
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If that is true it should be detected in the association studies. For now fish consumption is healthy. But you can have other reasons for not eating it. Usually biased in conferences and such for sustainability reasons or ethics, which can be very valid for many but not excuse misrepresenting the health data.
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Ignorance leads to prejudice.
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Do tell the experts they’re wrong about the healthfulness of fish consumption because of your mechanistic evidence. After you’ve learned about the hierarchy of evidence, of course.
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Supposedly small doses of lithium are “beneficial” 
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I’d like to see the data on this.
I suspect there are increasing levels of toxins in fish, just as with all animals. The data I’ve seen suggests that smaller fish that are lower on the food chain (e.g. sardines to salmon sized fish) are likely much better than larger fish regarding toxins, and I believe they are still mostly health-promoting.
But I am open to new data…
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There have been alarming publications with that regard indeed. It has been the most important reason for me to cut out on fish entirely years ago. (Albeit I always felt a bit sad for the fish I ate in the first place).
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Peter Attia today discussed this very question. What is the best diet. His conclusion was that there is no one best and it depends on one’s life style and genetics. Check him out.
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The best diet (amount of food, macros, timing of food, variety of food, plants vs animals, proteins) is the one that:
(1) you can sustain with no visceral fat (satiating food, time restricted eating, etc)
(2) helps you maintain metabolic flexibility (can go without food if necessary for >24 hours; shift to fat burning easily)
(3) allows you to exercise vigorously sometimes (glucose for fuel) and for lengths of time sometimes (fat for fuel) without eating
(4) keeps your gut healthy enough (regular bowel movements, SCFA, few food intolerances; people tolerate different things)
(5) provides all or nearly all micronutrients needed for health; take a multivitamin too
(6) provides sufficient amino acids for recovery (and growth if that’s a goal). But you probably don’t need to take protein powers.
(7) limit consumed AGEs and stay below your personal limit of saturated fat
My diet doesn’t come from a book. I eat what I like but squeeze it into the above profile. Many ways to do it, no doubt.
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