‘It’s eating what the sea provides’: Galicia’s Atlantic diet eclipses Mediterranean cousin

Seagulls shriek, boats bob and the morning sun silvers the waters off the Coast of Death as two sailors take a break from winding up their conger eel lines to ponder the sudden interest in precisely what, and how, people here have eaten for centuries.

Like many in the small Galician fishing town of Fisterra – whose name is derived from the Latin for land’s end, because the lonely peninsula on which it sits is about as far west as you can go in mainland Spain – Sito Mendoza and Ramón Álvarez are a little puzzled by all the fuss over the Atlantic diet.

Photograph: Sam Jones/The Guardian Recent analysis of a clinical trial conducted almost a decade ago found that eating the Atlantic diet – which is rich in seafood, fruit and vegetables, and which also incorporates meat, dairy and potatoes – significantly reduced the incidence of metabolic syndrome, the cluster of health problems that increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and conditions related to the heart and blood vessels.

His friend Álvarez, with whom he once plied the Atlantic’s Sole Bank, chips in: “You need to keep busy; you need to keep moving!” Although both men retired in their late 50s, the conger lines they prepare in their wharfside shed, which can snag up to 700 eels on a good day, keep them occupied – as do Mendoza’s reminiscences of a long-ago fortnight in Newcastle: “Lovely girls.

By 4.30pm on weekdays, dozens of iced boxes beckon to buyers, offering glistening specimens of thornback ray, octopus, white sea bream, cuttlefish, wrasse, conger eel, hake, bonito, red mullet, mackerel, sole and monkfish.

Photograph: Europa Press News/GettyBrais Pichel, a young local chef whose Terra restaurant overlooking the beach in Fisterra won a Michelin star last year, says people in Galicia have always treated family meals, and the ingredients on which they are built, with respect and restraint.