The Club Med diet

Jetting to the sunny climes of the Mediterranean couldn't hurt if you feel a bout of depression settling in.

But a study in the Archives of General Psychiatry finds that if your aim is to minimise your risk of depression in the first place, you might stay right where you are and make your plate look like it's been to the Mediterranean. You should scale back on the meats and dairy fats, eat some nuts and increase your consumption of fish, vegetables and legumes doused in olive oil.

The Mediterranean diet has been linked to reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and cancer. It was only a matter of time before researchers began wondering if a Mediterranean diet also could reduce the risk of depression - which, like all of the above diseases, is linked to higher levels of inflammation throughout the body. They found tantalising suggestions of such a link: compared with Northern Europe, the countries surrounded by the Mediterranean report lower rates of mental illness and suicide.

The study linking adherence to a traditional Mediterranean diet with reduced depression risk is the first to test that link prospectively. It followed 10,094 graduates of the University of Navarra in Spain for roughly four and a half years, tracked their eating patterns and recorded how many of them reported multiple symptoms or a diagnosis of depression.

The researchers found that the more closely subjects stuck to the principal elements of a Mediterranean diet, the lower their likelihood of developing depression.

So what is it - the sunshine, the hillside towns that keep even octogenarians walking daily on errands? The tradition of far niente? The fish, the nuts, the legumes, the olive oil? While acknowledging that lifestyle factors or genetics might contribute to the lowered risk of depression, the researchers focused largely on the dietary components and sought to single out those most effective in warding off depression.

In the end, they noted, "The role of the overall dietary pattern may be more important than the effect of single components."

They suggested that depression may yield in the face of a "synergistic combination" of polyunsaturated fats from olive oil and nuts, antioxidants from fruits and flavenoids, B vitamins and natural folate from vegetables.