AsianScientist (Mar. 27, 2025) – Inspired by cultures surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, the Mediterranean Diet (MedDiet) is widely lauded for its health benefits. Being high in fiber and monounsaturated fat while low in sugar and processed foods, its ability to reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes and even cancer makes it a topic of interest for many scientists.
However, adopting the MedDiet might not be practical for everyone. Picture a Mediterranean meal, and you might think of seared salmon drizzled in olive oil, a fresh vegetable salad topped with feta cheese and perhaps a glass of red wine. While delicious, these dishes are not part of the average daily Asian diet and are typically more expensive to buy or cook than local dishes, making it difficult for dietitians in Asia to recommend them to their patients.
Associate Professor Verena Tan from the Health and Social Sciences Cluster at the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) recognized this disparity 15 years ago when she was a clinical dietitian. Now an academic, her dream is to create an Asian Mediterranean diet—a localized version of the MedDiet.
“Dining at a Mediterranean restaurant every week isn’t feasible for most Singaporeans. Additionally, Mediterranean-type foods aren’t commonly found in our local food centers,” she explained. “Knowledge about the Mediterranean diet is still limited in Singapore, especially on how to mix and match food items to replicate it. Without this understanding, it can be quite challenging to follow a Mediterranean diet in Asia.”
To bridge the gap, Associate Professor Tan and her team developed a four-week Asian MedDiet menu of breakfast, lunch, dinner and an afternoon snack, using locally available ingredients. Despite the many studies investigating the MedDiet, none had precisely defined its composition. To adapt the MedDiet, the SIT team first had to quantify it, mapping out the portion sizes and nutrients that make it effective.
“Our approach is first to thoroughly understand what the MedDiet is—what it contains from a macronutrient perspective, as well as from the micronutrient and bioactive component perspective,” shared Associate Professor Tan.
Once the team had established the nutritional targets they were working toward, they were able to map it to local Singaporean ingredients, prioritizing affordability and accessibility. Then, they began the painstaking process of developing over 100 recipes using these ingredients that adhered to the dietary proportions they had defined.
Translating these recipes to reality required collaboration. The team partnered with aviation solutions provider SATS to produce 14 of their dishes for a sensory evaluation of the menu. Working alongside Dr George Goh, a hepatologist from the Singapore General Hospital, they recruited 30 patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) for this pilot study as NAFLD is a condition that benefits from being managed with the MedDiet.
Evaluated based on factors like taste, texture and aroma, most dishes received favorable ratings from the study participants. This marked the recipe development process as a success for Associate Professor Tan, who emphasized the importance of palatability in an effective diet.
“Scientifically, we know that taste drives repeat food consumption. Therefore, we had to ensure that the Asian MedDiet recipes are delicious so that people will continue to eat them and reap their health benefits,” she said.
The remaining food samples were sent for laboratory analysis to verify the nutritional similarity of the newly developed Asian MedDiet to the original MedDiet. Meanwhile, Associate Professor Tan is finalizing the data analysis and results of the study. She is set to present her research at the Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology and the International Congress of Nutrition later this year.
Ultimately, Associate Professor Tan’s vision is to make an impact on the Singaporean population by providing an affordable and accessible version of the Asian MedDiet. A previous study linked the MedDiet with reduced cardiovascular events, following 7,000 participants and tracking their health outcomes over nearly five years. She envisions replicating this comprehensive intervention study with the Asian population in Singapore. This would be a complex undertaking involving recruiting study participants, catering food for them and conducting regular health checkups to monitor the effects of the diet.
“Intervention studies are notoriously difficult and very expensive to conduct,” she explained. “You are feeding people, delivering food and tracking biomarkers over three months. It is very intensive, but that’s my dream.”
The Asian Mediterranean Diet research is ongoing. For more information, contact Associate Professor Verena Tan here.
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Source: SIT, Shutterstock
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