The Perfect Meal, Episode 2: Liquid Gold
May's Top 30 Films
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26m
Directed by Alexandros Merkouris • Documentary • 2023 • 26 minutes
In Pamplona, Spain, a group of scientists have been researching the connection between our health and the food we've been eating since the 1980s. Led by Dr. Miguel Ángel Martínez-González and Dr. Miguel Ruiz Canela, they argue that young people in Spain have adopted a Western diet and abandoned the culinary traditions of their grandparents. We discover the results of the ground-breaking Predimed study, focusing on the beneficial role of olive oil. To understand how its nutrients affect our body, we travel to Cyprus to discover the work of pharmacologist Prokopios Mayiatis at an olive grove in the ‘Dead Zone’ that has divided Cyprus since the Turkish invasion in 1974. The absence of human activity or the use of pesticides helped to produce one of the healthiest olive oils in the world. From Cyprus, we travel to the Aegean Sea in Greece, where a group of researchers are enriching the food of sea bream with olive oil to help prevent heart disease.