Mediterranean diet and metabolic syndrome in an urban population: the Athens Study.

Background: Previous studies demonstrated the beneficial impact of the Mediterranean diet (MedDiet) on metabolic syndrome (MetS). The aim of this study was to retrospectively investigate the association between MedDiet and MetS in a representative sample of the Athenian population in the early 1980s, when MetS had not been established as an entity yet.

Methods: In a cross-sectional epidemiologic survey of cardiovascular disease (CVD), 2,074 randomly selected adults were examined: 900 men and 1,174 women (age, 46.