Mediterranean Diet May Not Benefit Everyone, Study Says

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) -- The highly touted benefits of the Mediterranean diet may not reach everyone, according to a new study.

The health benefits to the heart are well-documented when it comes to studies about the diet which emphasizes vegetables, nuts, fruits, fish and grains with a limit on red meat and replacing butter with olive oil.

Now Italian researchers say those benefits are limited to people with higher income and education levels or some combination of the two - in other words, "higher socioeconomic groups."

In turn, those in low-income groups don't see the same benefits when it comes to reducing their risk of cardiovascular disease.

The study, published this week in the International Journal of Epidemiology, studied 24,325 men and women randomly recruited from parts of southern Italy from March 2005 to April 2010.