Zone diet confirms the development of Operation CO2

The senior agronomic coordinator, Egbert Sonneveld, of the Life+ project ‘Operation CO2’ funded by the European Commission visited the Zone Consultant course in Madrid for professionals on March 7th 2013 and had an interview with the creator of the Zone Diet in the USA, Dr. Barry Sears. Egbert was especially interested to hear the good news for Spanish farmers who want to produce products and ingredients for consumers who want to follow the Zone diet. Dr. Barry Sears has over 4 million followers in the USA and the number of followers in Europe is multiplying every year. The recommendations of Barry Sears have been endorsed scientifically by the Harvard Medical School. The question to the project members of ‘Operation CO2’ is if we can make a selection of trees and crops on the two pilot fields that would fit into the Enerzona way of eating.

The good news from Barry Sears is:

• Extra virgin olive oil and red wine are excellent products for the Enerzona diet since they contain very healthy polyphenols and the right vegetal fats
• Also almond, pistachio and pine nuts are excellent sources of vegetal fats
• Grasses and legumes under the trees of our agro-forestry system are excellent fodder for dairy and meat production which are good sources of protein
• Of the cereals meant for human consumption Barry Sears prefers the oats and the ancient grains like spelt and Kamut because the glucemic index is low so the insulin response too; on irrigated land he likes the idea of investigating ‘new’ crops like teff, quinoa and amaranth that always their glucemic index be low

We can conclude that Spain is producing a lot of favorable products for the Zone diet being olive oil, red wine, nuts, fresh vegetables and of course lots of fruit. Spain has a tradition of producing excellent cereals and legumes for animal feeding but of course the most famous are the acorns produced by the various oak trees species all over Spain. Dr Sears enjoyed the first class ‘jamon Iberico’ on the market in Madrid.