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The Mediterranean Diet (MD) is an expression of different Mediterranean food cultures and lifestyles. It is characterized by high consumption of olive oil, vegetables, legumes, whole grain products, fruits and nuts. This paper aims to emphasize on the evolution of human diet from earliest human ancestors to current civilization, the effect of MD on human health and the role of globalization to shift traditional diet, particularly MD to processed foods.

Different published papers were collected from the internet by using the following phrases: evolution of human diet, human ancestors, the effect of globalization on a regional diet, Mediterranean diet, healthy food, food pyramid, evolution of human diet and effect of globalization on diet. Finally, the papers were read and summarized as a review paper.

MD has been accepted worldwide owing to its health impact such as prevention and control of type 2 diabetes, anti-inflammatory effects and decrease in the risk of cardiovascular diseases and incidence of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. However, in conjunction with this discordance between our ancient, genetically determined biology and the nutritional, cultural and activity patterns of contemporary Western populations, many of the so-called diseases of civilization have emerged. Particularly, the food staples and food-processing procedures introduced during the Neolithic and Industrial periods have fundamentally altered nutritional characteristics of ancestral hominin diets. MD is currently under the risk of extinction for a result of the effects of globalization.

The review paper focuses on the evolution of human diet as an effect of globalization on the regional diet with emphasis on the MD. It specifically focuses on the link between diet and earliest human ancestors, about MD and its health benefit, diet pyramid and effect of globalization on regional diet.

This paper aims to assess Food Variety Score (FVS), Dietary Diversity Score (DDS) and dietary quality of collected complementary foods consumed in Jimma town, southwest Ethiopia.

Multi-stage stratified simple random sampling method was used to identify 384 children who were between 6 to 24 months of age living in Jimma town, Ethiopia. FVS and DDS were assessed based on 24 h recall method. Aliquot of infant’s diet samples were collected from randomly selected 30 household mothers feeding to 6-24 months aged children, and they are combined to get 15 samples by enquiring the ingredients similarly used in preparation. The major nutrients, anti-nutrients were determined with standard procedures. Further, nutrient adequacy and mean adequacy were determined for collected samples.

Results showed that mean FVS was 7.14 ± 4.07 (range 0 to 18) and DDS was 3.44 ± 1.75 (range 1 to 8). Consumption of diversified diet among the studied population significantly associated with residence areas of children’s (p = 0.001), age of the care taker (p = 0.001), occupation of care takers (p = 0.001), monthly income (p = 0.001), average money spent on food purchase per month (p = 0.001). Average mean adequacy of macronutrients (crude protein, crude fat and carbohydrate) was observed as 0.81, micronutrient (Fe, Ca, Zn) mean adequacy was 0.49 and Vitamin A adequacy was 0.34 for the complementary foods. All the complementary foods were reported mean adequacy of < 1 for macro and micro nutrients.

Studies on dietary diversity and dietary quality of the complementary foods were not documented in Jimma town, Ethiopia. The results of this study are highly useful to understand the complementary foods consumption pattern particularly in dietary diversity and food variety. Moreover, results obtained on dietary quality are very useful to recommend further development in complementary food preparations in the study area.