Marinated Mozzarella Pearls Recipe, Spotlight on Mozzarella, Storing Jars, The Fat Conundrum, and The Smarter Mediterranean Diet
It’s not quite summer and I’m already looking for recipes that don’t involve turning on the oven! This mozzarella dish fits the bill. It couldn’t be more flavorful…or simpler. The cheese is the perfect foil for fresh-pressed olive oil—I know you’ll be serving it from now through autumn! One of the two new studies I’m sharing reveals that excess weight poses different threats for women and men, while the other presents a possible solution for everyone: an approach called the “smarter” Mediterranean diet. Read on for the details.
Marinated Mozzarella Pearls
Marinated Mozzarella PearlsAdd zest to mozzarella with this flavorful marinade. Pearls are cheese balls about the size of cherry tomatoes. Serve them as a finger food or pair with tomatoes for a first course.
Ingredients
- 1 medium lemon
- 1 garlic clove
- 1/4 cup finely chopped mix of fresh parsley and basil leaves
- 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, or more to taste
- 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt
- 16 ounces mozzarella pearls
Directions
Step 1
Use a Microplane set over a medium bowl to zest the lemon (reserve the rest of the lemon for another recipe) and grate the garlic. Add the herbs, red pepper, olive oil, and salt if using and whisk well.
Step 2
Place the mozzarella into a half-pint lidded jar. Drizzle the olive oil mixture over the pearls and let marinate on the counter for 30 minutes. If not eating right away, cover and refrigerate (bring to room temperature before serving).
Serves 8
Healthy Ingredient Spotlight
Fresh Mozzarella
Handcrafted fresh mozzarella, now available in many food markets, is a versatile cheese, ready to be enjoyed cold or melted in hot dishes. True Italian mozzarella is mozzarella di bufala, or mozzarella made from milk of the Italian Mediterranean buffalo. In the US, it is almost always made from cow’s milk, though a handful of artisanal makers are raising buffalo to produce more authentic varieties and some Italian makers export the real thing.
Debunking cheese’s negative health rap, research published in the journal Advances in Nutrition found moderate evidence suggesting that eating cheese doesn’t increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases and may even offer some protection from these ills. Fresh mozzarella, in particular, is considered one of the healthier cheeses, due to its low fat and sodium content along with 7 grams of protein and over 200 mg of calcium per ounce.
Quick Kitchen Nugget
Storing Jars
With the move away from plastics, there are many glass options for storing food. Round clip top jars made by companies including Kilner and Weck are cylindrical containers with a hinged metal clamp and replaceable rubber seal. Great for storing dry staples like flour, grains, pasta, even teas, they’re also perfect for marinating and pickling vegetables. Mason jars go one step further—thanks to their tempered glass, they can withstand the heat of boiling water, making them ideal for canning. To meet kitchen needs, consider a range of sizes: half-pint (1 cup), pint (2 cups), quart (4 cups), and half-gallon (8 cups).
For Your Best Health
The Fat Conundrum
New findings presented by a research team from Dokuz Eylul University in Izmir, Turkey at this year’s European Congress on Obesity (ECO) highlight clear differences in how obesity affects men and women.
“Our findings reveal intriguing differences in the way men and women respond to obesity,” said lead author Dr. Zeynep Pekel. “They show just how important gender-specific research is. Not only are sex differences a powerful player in the pathology and course of obesity, but our results indicate that such differences could be a stepping stone toward finding targeted, sex-based therapies to help in the management of people living with obesity.”
Their findings showed that men with obesity are more likely to accumulate abdominal (visceral) fat. This type of fat surrounds internal organs and is strongly linked to serious heart and metabolic conditions. They had a slightly higher body mass index (BMI) than women (37.5 vs 36.0 kg/m²), but their waist circumference was much larger (120 vs 108 cm), and their systolic blood pressure was also higher (128 vs 122 mmHg), two factors linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The men also had significantly higher levels of liver enzymes (ALT and GGT), triglycerides, and creatinine. These findings point to a greater likelihood of liver-related and metabolic complications.
Women with obesity, on the other hand, had higher total cholesterol (215 vs 203 mg/dL) and LDL or “bad” cholesterol (130 vs 123 mg/dL). They typically store more fat beneath the skin and showed higher levels of inflammatory markers, including erythrocyte sedimentation rate, C-reactive protein, and platelet count, raising the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
“It’s still early days and these findings need to be confirmed in other patient groups, but they offer important insight into how obesity may affect men and women differently,” said Dr. Pekel. “These differences are likely influenced by biological factors such as hormones, immune responses, and fat distribution. Our next steps are to validate these findings in larger populations, better understand the biological processes behind these differences, and explore how these patterns relate to clinical risk.”
Fitness Flash
The Smarter Mediterranean Diet
The Mediterranean diet is already famous for its heart and metabolic benefits. Now a large European study called the PREDIMED-Plus Trial revealed that a lower-calorie Mediterranean diet may work even better against type 2 diabetes when paired with three realistic upgrades: eating fewer calories, moving more, and getting professional support for weight loss.
The trial found that this more structured version of Mediterranean living reduced the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 31% over six years. Participants also lost more weight (3.3 kg), reduced abdominal fat more effectively, and reduced waist circumference by 3.6 cm, compared to those following a standard Mediterranean diet alone.
In real world terms, the researchers estimated that the program prevented about three cases of type 2 diabetes for every 100 participants. For a condition affecting hundreds of millions of people globally, that kind of prevention could add up quickly if applied broadly among people at elevated risk.
“Diabetes is the first solid clinical outcome for which we have shown — using the strongest available evidence — that the Mediterranean diet with calorie reduction, physical activity, and weight loss is a highly effective preventive tool,” said Miguel Ángel Martínez-González, Professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Navarra, Adjunct Professor of Nutrition at Harvard University, and one of the principal investigators of the project. “Applied at scale in at-risk populations, these modest and sustained lifestyle changes could prevent thousands of new diagnoses every year. We hope soon to show similar evidence for other major public health challenges.”
“The Mediterranean diet acts synergistically to improve insulin sensitivity and reduce inflammation. With PREDIMED-Plus, we demonstrate that combining calorie control and physical activity enhances these benefits,” explained Miguel Ruiz-Canela, Professor and Chair of Preventive Medicine and Public Health Department at the University of Navarra’s School of Medicine and first author of the study. “It is a tasty, sustainable, and culturally accepted approach that offers a practical and effective way to prevent type 2 diabetes — a global disease that is, to a large extent, avoidable.”
The project is the largest nutrition trial conducted in Europe and involved the University of Navarra along with more than 200 researchers from 22 other Spanish universities, as well as hospitals and research centers. The work was carried out in more than 100 primary care centers within Spain’s National Health System.
Since the PREDIMED-Plus diabetes findings were prepared, related research has continued to strengthen the broader picture. A PREDIMED-Plus body composition analysis published in JAMA Network Open found that the energy-reduced Mediterranean diet plus physical activity helped reduce total and visceral fat while slowing age-related loss of lean mass in older adults with overweight or obesity and metabolic syndrome. That matters because visceral fat and declining muscle are closely tied to cardiometabolic risk.
More recent PREDIMED-Plus work has also explored how sedentary time may affect cardiovascular health. A 2026 study in BMC Cardiovascular Disorders reported that replacing sedentary time with physical activity was associated with favorable five-year changes in high-sensitivity troponin T, a blood marker related to heart stress, although the pattern was not consistent across all atrial fibrillation–related biomarkers.
A 2026 analysis from the original PREDIMED trial also highlighted the possible importance of food quality within the diet. Participants with higher cumulative intake of extra virgin olive oil had a lower risk of a broad cardiovascular outcome, while common olive oil showed weaker associations. The finding supports a practical message for readers: the Mediterranean diet is not only about eating less or eating more plants. The type and quality of fats may matter too.
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