Vanilla Bourbon Cider Cocktail

The PREDIMED study — the most comprehensive randomized clinical trial of the Mediterranean diet ever conducted, involving over seven thousand participants followed for nearly five years — found that participants assigned to a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra virgin olive oil or nuts had a thirty percent lower risk of major cardiovascular events compared to those assigned to a low-fat control diet. The study was stopped early because the difference in outcomes was so significant that continuing to withhold the Mediterranean diet from the control group was considered unethical. The Mediterranean diet is the most evidence-supported dietary pattern for cardiovascular health in the nutritional research literature — and the specific evidence for extra virgin olive oil as its most important component is among the strongest in nutritional science.