By Amy Norton NEW YORK | Wed Jun 15, 2011 5:28pm EDT

I add a TEAspoon (40 calories) of olive oil to my cooked veggies (1/2 – 1 lb for each lunch and dinner).  It adds taste, but I don’t drown my food in oil – the calories add up quickly.

A Mediterranean diet (which typically includes olive oil) has been shown to help prevent heart disease and diabetes.  Now a new study shows 41% less stroke as well in those who eat olive oil frequently! Reports Reuters:

“We need to remember that this is an observational study,” said Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas, a neurologist at Columbia University Medical Center in New York who wrote an editorial published with the study. The study found a correlation between people’s olive oil use and their stroke risk, he told Reuters Health — but that doesn’t necessarily translate into cause-and-effect. “People who use a lot of olive oil may be very different from people who don’t,” Scarmeas said. Olive oil users may, for example, have higher incomes, eat better overall or exercise more often than people who never use the oil. The researchers on the new study, led by Cécilia Samieri of the French national research institute INSERM, tried to account for those differences. And after they did, olive oil was still linked to a lower stroke risk. But it’s impossible to fully account for all those variables, Scarmeas noted. What’s needed, he said, are clinical trials where people are randomly assigned to use olive oil or not, then followed over time to see who suffers a stroke. Such clinical trials are considered the “gold standard” of medical evidence.

Olive oil and balsamic vinegar