Mylona has studied the island's early occupants' diets for 20 years with the Institute of Aegean Prehistory Study Center.
Rusk, gritty barley bread, constituted the diet's foundation, she determined. "You can see it in their teeth.
They're worn down and damaged from chewing on this hard stuff." Whole grains provided 39% of Cretans' daily calories.
As essential as Cretans' carbs was what they didn't eat. In particular, sugar.
The indigenous diet's honey and grape must provided 50 calories a day—about 3 teaspoons of extra sugar.
The average American consumes 23 teaspoons of added sugar every day, more than the Greeks did in a week.
Mariana Kavroulaki, another food- and gastronomy-focused archaeologist, explained under a canopy of 350-year-old olive trees outside Chaniá.
One of the most contentious aspects of the Mediterranean diet is the use of red wine (krasí) as a vitamin.
Some studies have found that moderate drinking—about a drink a day for women and two for men—can cut heart disease risk.