<p class="ingestion featured-caption">Dr. Simon Poole is an expert in the Mediterranean diet.Dr. Simon Poole/Getty</p><ul class="summary-list"><li>The Mediterranean diet is recognized as the gold standard for healthy eating.</li><li>Dr. Simon Poole, an expert in the diet shared, three lunch ideas with Insider.</li></ul><p>If you're looking to eat more <a href="https://www.insider.com/mediterranean-diet-healthy-snack-ideas-2023-5" rel>Mediterranean diet</a>-style meals but are stuck on what to have for lunch, Dr. Simon Poole has you covered.</p><p>Poole, an expert on the diet based in Cambridge, UK, told Insider that the <a href="https://www.insider.com/mediterranean-diet-ranked-as-best-diet-of-year-6th-time-2023-01" rel>Mediterranean diet</a> is the gold standard for healthy eating. It centres around vegetables, legumes, seafood, and olive oil, while processed and fried foods, red meat, refined grains, sugar, and saturated fat should be limited. </p><p>Poole adopted the diet himself about 20 years ago and, as a family medical practitioner, began suggesting it to his patients too.</p><p>"They came back to me with better blood pressures, better cholesterols, better weight, and were really actually enjoying the diet and finding it much more sustainable than other diets that they'd been told to follow in the past," he said.</p><p>There has been a "very <a href="https://www.insider.com/guides/health/diet-nutrition/mediterranean-diet" rel>considerable amount of really good, high quality scientific research</a> to show that it reduces the risks of really so many chronic diseases, from heart disease and stroke through to many cancers and even Alzheimer's disease," he said.</p><p>Poole shared three of his favorite lunches with Insider. </p>