Our Story
To maintain good health you have to have a good diet, and decades of research has found that the Mediterranean diet helps you live a longer, healthier life. But at the same time, people from Asian countries such as Japan live the longest. So maybe it makes sense to get the best of both worlds and follow a way of eating that includes a variety of healthy, delicious foods from both regions?
Hi, I’m Trudy. For well over a decade that’s exactly what Ric and I have been doing, and it’s made a huge difference to our health and wellbeing. The best part is, we get to enjoy mouthwatering Mediterranean and Asian foods every day like pasta dishes, curries, risottos, sushi, stir-fries and pizza!
My parents are both medical doctors, so I’ve always had a natural interest in health and healthy living. But it wasn’t until I was introduced to authentic Asian cooking by my Chinese-Malaysian sister-in-law as a teenager that I discovered healthy food could also be delicious — and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Then in my twenties I met and fell in love with Ric, who followed a Mediterranean diet to help him recover from a near-fatal motorcycle accident. He introduced me to Mediterranean cooking, I introduced him to Asian cooking, and we ended up bonding over Pad Thai and paella!
We were also inspired to base our own diets around traditional Mediterranean and Asian foods. This had such a positive effect on our health (and our taste buds!) that we decided to launch this website to share our recipes and spread the word about the benefits of what we call a ‘MediterrAsian’ diet.
Not long after launching, our site was named as a “Hot Site” by USA Today, and a “New and Notable Site” by Yahoo. This led to the publication of our cookbook and lifestyle guide, The MediterrAsian Way. The book received a recommendation from the Library Journal, and was named as one of the best cookbooks of the year by Southern California’s oldest daily newspaper, the Santa Barbara News-Press.
Since the launch of our website and publication of our book there’s been growing interest among health and nutrition experts about the benefits of the MediterrAsian diet.
In fact, research by German scientists from the University of Kiel found that combining Mediterranean and Asian diets can have a very positive effect on your health and lifespan. That’s because many traditional Mediterranean and Asian foods (such as olive oil, red wine, turmeric and green tea) are rich in powerful antioxidants called polyphenols. Scientific research has found that polyphenols can slow cellular aging, reduce inflammation, help regulate blood sugars and boost metabolism.
The scientists concluded that a MediterrAsian diet combining the polyphenol-rich foods of the Mediterranean diet as well as the Asian diet, “may be a promising dietary strategy in preventing chronic diseases, thereby ensuring health and healthy aging.”
A few years later, a team of Italian scientists from the University of Pavia conducted research looking at the benefits of combining Mediterranean and Asian foods to improve cholesterol levels. They found that a MediterrAsian diet boosted “good” HDL cholesterol, and reduced heart disease risk.
The University of Arizona College of Medicine now even offers an accredited course for physicians and dietitians which focuses on the powerful anti-inflammatory and disease-fighting effects of combining traditional Mediterranean and Asian eating practices.
So, if you want to get healthy and in shape, reduce your risk of chronic disease and live longer — all while enjoying a wide range of delicious foods — we highly recommend you adopt a MediterrAsian way of eating. Let our site be your guide. It’s packed with simple, delicious and nutritious Mediterranean and Asian recipes, lifestyle tips, and lots of other useful resources to help you live a longer, healthier life.
