I'm so tired of this whack-a-mole game of one unfounded, usually dangerous and usually corporate-backed, dietary fad after another.

From a purely scientific and public health standpoint, the Mediterranean dietary pattern - as defined by Ancel Keys - has been the gold standard for decades, and will continue to be so unless something fundamentally changes about the human condition. Every well studied, consensus-backed reference diet from every leading nutritional authority around the world promotes some variation of that diet. If there are better diets, or diets with optimizations for specific conditions, they are still built on that foundation.

And while I tend to prefer to err on the side of no oil, if I'm going to use any added fats, it's going to be olive oil or canola oil.

And also, there are more things to consider in diet than personal health. Go vegan.

But why is Mediterranean the gold standard?

So the debunking is an opinion piece, not fundamental research. Harvard is not making a new publication, it's just giving out pre-existing opinion in this context