Thank you for your interest in my diet, I ought to tell you that this is not like most normal descriptive diets but a personal sipnosis of whole foods based on my experience, and for you to reach your own conclusions, consumed by people in different parts of the World and how they seem to correlate to my own upbringing and the effect it has had on peoples health, wellbeing and happiness.

My name, as you may already have guessed by the title, is Juan. I was born in the island of Ibiza and so was my father (1896 to 1991) and paternal grand father -1862 to 1963 (101 when he died) who was a direct descended from "Hispanas de la Reconquista" when, on the 8th August 1235 Don Guillermo de Montgri took the island and has ever since been under the administration of main land Spain. The island was first discovered by the Phoenician merchants in the 9th Century before Christ, the local Museum houses the most important Punic art in the world, found in many parts of the island. It was home to the most prosperous ancient civilisations: Phoenicians, Egyptians, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines and Arabs. The mild climate with over 300 days per year of sunshine and a temperature of 12 centigrade's rising in the summer to 30/35 centigrade's has the necessary conditions to contribute to the happiness of the most demanding mortal. The blue skies and scenery have been a constant inspiration to world artists since immortalized in the canvasses of the famous Spanish painters Joaquin Sorolla (1863 - 1923) and Santiago Rusinol (1861 - 1931).

The Island of Ibiza may have a reputation for attracting young binge drinkers and clubbers but during my younger years neither they or any other tourist were known with the exception of a small community of world essentialists which I was part off. Even today the more remote parts of the island are among the most beautiful in the Mediterranean.
My maternal ancestors originated from South America my mother was Chilian. However our interest centres on the diets of my paternal Ibithencan ancestors and the one I was brought up with. The agriculture of the island was primitive and remained unchanged for thousands of years and being a family of farmers, as most people on the Island were at that time, we had to be sustained by the fruits of the soil we were not vegetarians, however meat was indeed a rare pleasure and our diets were comprised mostly of fruit and vegetables, either fresh during the season or dried out of season with locally caught fish. Our bread was made and baked by ourselves every two weeks from wholesome unrefined flour which had been milled from wheat and barley grown at our farm without pesticides, I recall in my later years we bought white bread from a newly opened bakery and my grandfather refused to eat it so we had to continue baking in an oven prefired with marine pine wood.

Vegetables
Vegetables and pulses played a great part in the in the daily diet of the ancient Ibithencan farmer; peas, broad bean's, bean's (either fresh or dried), cabbage, potatoes, sweet potatoes, lentils, chick peas etc and a green mixture with Lupinus Albus and "bledas" a type of spinach and other fresh herbs known as "Cuinat" were traditionally consumed during the 40 days of lent.

Salads
Salads were a relevant part of a daily diet during the summer months served with a dressing of grape vinegar and olive oil. The vinegar and oil was produced and made by ourselves using ancient traditional methods unchanged for centuries. (see details how it is made)

Fruits
The ancient Ibicencan diet consumed a variety of fruits in season such grapes, figs, pears, apricots, plums, melons, olives etc. which are grown in large quantities. Figs were eaten fresh in summer and sun-dried for the winter months.

Milk
Milk is considered a complete food when it comes from unpolluted pastures, although cows were kept on the island most milk came from goats which we milked to make cheese, made without artificial additives by using a wild herb from a very ancient recipe, the cheese was consumed fresh and some was dried to the consistency of parmesan to be eaten during the winter months. Milk itself, apart from baby's was rarely eaten with the exception of the whey.

Wine
We drank freely our fresh homemade wine, prepared from grapes which was left to ferment from 3 to 8 days before using it. During my childhood one of my treats was when my grandfather
bought some fresh fish and collected two or three lemons freshly picked from the lemon tree and headed to the mountain woods with a large bottle of our own wine and grilled the fish over an open camp fire. I recall my grandfather saying this wine can not be compared with the one you buy from the shop which is made with additives.

Meat
A little meat was consumed during celebration meals, although two pigs were butchered every year during the early winter to provide all year round a type of salami "sobrasada" and dry salted meat on the bone which was occasionally stewed usually with cabbage. I assumed this to be the less healthy part but some protein is necessary in every diet although fish provided the larger part.
Poultry and  rabbits were also occasionally butchered for the family table and fresh eggs from a small free range flock, which was fed with our own harvested corn.

Water
Every country/farm house was constructed with stone and a large deposit excavated many meters under it, starting with small round aperture and gradually, after ganing depth, enlarging the circumference this was used to store thousands of litres of rain water for drinking and cooking. It must be noted that this water was mineralised, by accident rather then intentionally.
The flat roofs of all farm houses were covered by clay to make them water proof and when the winter rains came part of this clay was washed away together with the water into the large deposit called "Cisterna". The roofs were maintained by spreading every year a fresh layer of clay, in fact I remember that during the winter months we could go for weeks drinking a white water. I now realize that this is how you would today be taking healing clay.
All farmers were selfsuficient, we even made our own sea salt and apart from sugar and a few other commodities we did not have to do much shopping. We had some treats they were had during festive seasons; At Christmas we made a sweet dish with almonds, which are largely grown on the Island, called "Salsa" very much the consistency of Porridge. At Easter "Flaon" a cheese cake with a type of herb like mint, the fruits of  "the all saint day" were pine nuts and pomegranates which were grown at our farm. etc. etc.
With the above diet Ibithencans were of fine physical development and power of endurance and old men and woman in theirs 80's and 90's could very often be seen working in the fields.

A comparison between the Ibithencan and Hunza diet
Let us have a look at another diet similar with a few exceptions.
The daily diet of the Hunzakuts is composed very much of the same foods which are grown by them in the same way that the Ibithencans. The exemptions being that they eat them in a more raw state. They eat butter and apricot oil , we eat pork dripping and olive oil. They eat dairy, we eat fish. They eat the Chapatti (bread), we eat the levelness black bread. They drink wine made by their own grapes, we drink our own wine made in the same way. And so on and on.
Before I proceed to elaborate in more detail on the Hunzakut diet let us observe the work Dr. Robert McCarrison, a brilliant English surgeon, who took up the study of certain diseases common to the peoples of Asia. In 1927, Dr. McCarrison was appointed Director of Nutrition Research in India under the Research Fund Association.
For this work and experiments he chose albino rats. Rats are largely used in nutritional laboratories because they love all human food. Their span of life is short, so their whole life history can be observed.
For the first phase of his experiment, Dr. McCarrison chose healthy rats, then placed them in good conditions, with fresh air, sunlight, comfort and cleanliness.
He chose their diet from foods eaten regularly by the Hunzakuts: chapattis made of wholemeal flour, lightly smeared with fresh butter, sprouted pulse; fresh raw carrots; cabbage; unboiled milk; a small ration of meat with bones once a week, and an abundance of water.
In this experiment almost 1,200 rats were watched from birth to the twenty-seventh month, an age in the rat which corresponds to that of about fifty years in a man. At this stage the hunza-diet-fed rats were killed and carefully examined. Dr. Macarrison's report was remarkable!

"During the past two and a quarter years there has been no case of illness in this "universe" of albino rats, no death from natural causes in the adult stock, and, but for a few accidental deaths, no infantile mortality. Both clinical and at postmortem examination of this stock has been shown to be remarkably free from disease. It may be that some of them have cryptic disease of one kind or another, but if so, I have failed to find either clinical or microscopical evidence of it."

His experiments did not, however, stop here. In later experiments, Dr. McCarrison gave a set of rats the diet of the poorer classes of England: white bread, margarine, sweetened tea, boiled vegetables, tinned meats and inexpensive jams and jellies. On this diet, not only did the rats develop all kinds of disease conditions, but they became nervous wrecks: "They were nervous and apt to bite their attendants; they lived unhappily together, and by the sixteenth day of the experiment they began to kill and eat the weaker ones."

The Hunzakuts eat apricots in the same way that the Ibithencans eat figs, other than the stones of the fresh apricots are cracked open and the kernels also eaten. It is tasty  and apparently very nourishing. In fact another food has been discovered in that kernel, mainly a rich oil used by the Hunzakuts in abundance. Since apricot oil is so essential for their diet, every farmer grows more apricot trees than any of the other fruit trees. Since there is a trace of prussic acid in the seed, and an excess of it could be harmful, one man is assigned to supervise the apricot trees. His job is to taste the fruit of each newly producing tree as well as the seed, and if there is any trace of bitterness the tree is destroyed. "So here go the greatest sting in history and all those who support it as a remedy should be brought to account."

Making the oil by Hunza women; Making the oil from the apricot kernels seems to be a primitive and tedious job. First the seeds must be removed from the pits, then pounded into a pulp and rolled into a fine meal with a stone. Then the fine meal is lightly sprinkled with water and heated on a low fire. Finally, as the oil begins to separate from the meal, the pot is removed from the fire and the pulp is kneaded by hand until the oil is extracted from the mass.

Making Oilve Oil by the Ibithencan men; Whilst by today's standards it would also be regarded as primitive it could be considered a more advanced method, brought to the Island by the  ancient Egyptians, as it happened in 1957 during my early days as a student I, along with the owner of the "Trui", (which is a building especially contructed for making the olive oil) made the oil from the same season harvested olives. The "Trui" is a stone building although constructed in 1868 it funtions with the same method as used by the ancient Phoenicians and Egyptians. It has a  flat roof with approximately 15 metres long, 6 metres wide by 4 metres high, inside it houses a very large marine pine tree trunk 8.5 meters long with approximately 68 cm wide x 85 cm high. This trunk is fastened by a steel pin at the thinner end whilst the thicker end is supported by a large wood turning which lowers it to assert its own pressure on the esparto cushions loaded with the fine olive meal. Warm water is lightly sprinkled on the cushions, then the water and  oil starts seperating and runs together via a channel into two wells one of which is low and the oil being lighter than water settles at the top where it is collected and strained into small wooden barrels or glass "garrafas" these are large glass containers of approximately 5 to 10 litres and protected by an outer cover of esparto etc.. At one end there is a large round stone trough with a centre milling stone where the olives are ground to a pulp by a horse, this meal is loaded by hand into the esparto cushions as previously described. The  olive harvest lasts only about 4 weeks, the local farmers bring the olives ready for milling to the "Trui"and 25% of the oil yield is retained by the "Trui" owner plus the pressed pulp, as payment for his services. No money is exchanged and I got paid with a small percentage of olive oil. The pressed pulp is laid down in the sun to dry to a powder and mixed with ground corn as an animal foodstuff for hens, pigs etc. The described building is still on situe although it has not been in service for at lesat 40 years, modern cold steel presses are now used to make the olive oil.