MEDAS: the Mediterranean diet score
Fourteen questions on olive oil, vegetables, fruit, meat, fish, legumes, nuts, sweets and drinks, published by the PREDIMED investigators in 2012 to measure how closely eating follows the Mediterranean diet. Each question scores 1 point when its published criterion is met, the total runs from 0 to 14, and the result shows the authors’ category for that score. A score can be kept with its date, so a later score sits beside the earlier one.
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The Mediterranean diet page grades the evidence on it, free to read.
The questionnaire
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What the score means, in the authors’ words
Scores run from 0 to 14.
- 0 to 5: The authors’ lowest adherence category (5 or less).
- 6 to 9: The authors’ middle adherence category (6 to 9).
- 10 to 14: The authors’ highest adherence category (10 or more).
Each question scores 1 point when its published criterion is met, shown here as the answer that scores. In the PREDIMED participants, older adults at high cardiovascular risk, the score averaged 8.6, and higher scores went with lower waist-to-height ratio and other obesity measures. The questionnaire gives a point for 7 or more glasses of wine a week; that is the instrument as published, not an EBL grade. Two run-together words in the published table (“orcustard”, “tomatoand”) are printed here with their spaces.
MEDAS describes a pattern of eating. It is not a nutritional assessment, and its score is not a measure of health.
Related on EBL
- Mediterranean diet with extra-virgin olive oil: the evidence EBL grades for it, with its letter
- Alcohol reduction: the evidence EBL grades on drinking less
Source and terms of use
- Martínez-González MA, García-Arellano A, Toledo E, Salas-Salvadó J, Buil-Cosiales P, Corella D, Covas MI, Schröder H, Arós F, Gómez-Gracia E, Fiol M, Ruiz-Gutiérrez V, Lapetra J, Lamuela-Raventos RM, Serra-Majem L, Pintó X, Muñoz MA, Wärnberg J, Ros E, Estruch R, for the PREDIMED Study Investigators. A 14-item Mediterranean diet assessment tool and obesity indexes among high-risk subjects: the PREDIMED trial. PLoS One. 2012;7(8):e43134. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0043134
Terms of use: Published in PLoS ONE under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use and reproduction in any medium provided the original author and source are credited. (as stated here, checked 2026-11). The questions, answers and points are reproduced as published.
How it works
Where the questions, points and cut-off come from
The questions, the answers and the points for each answer are the authors’ own, reproduced as published, and the source papers are listed with the questionnaire. The page adds them up and prints, beside the total, the authors’ own words about that range of scores. EBL adds no interpretation of its own.
A kept score is stored with its date. Kept scores are listed by date with the change from the one before. A change shows what moved, not why.
What happens to your data
Nothing you enter leaves this device. Your answers and any score you keep are saved in this browser’s own storage, nothing is sent to EBL or anyone else, and signing in does not copy them to your account. Because EBL holds no copy, clearing this browser’s site data removes them for good.