Big benefit of following a Mediterranean diet

Filling up on fish, vegetables, fruit, whole grains and olive oil can foster the growth of good bacteria in the gut. Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina tracked subjects’ diets over 30 months and found that those who favored a Mediterranean diet had a 14 times greater abundance of beneficial probiotic strains like L. acidophilus than those who ate a Western diet. That’s a plus since these good bugs have been shown to double weight-loss success and reduce the frequency of colds and flu by 53%.