New Study Finds 'Mediterranean' Diet Significantly Reduces Brain Shrinkage (bbc.com)

schwit1 writes that 562 elderly research subjects cut their brain shrinkage in half just by changing their diet. (Paywalled article here). The BBC reports: A study of pensioners in Scotland found that those with a diet rich in fresh fruit, vegetables and olive oil had healthier brains than those with different eating habits. They suffered less brain shrinkage than those who regularly ate meat and dairy products. The study was carried out by University of Edinburgh researchers.... Scientists found that those who adhered most closely to the diet retained significantly greater brain volume after three years than those who did not... Lead researcher Dr Michelle Luciano said: "As we age, the brain shrinks and we lose brain cells, which can affect learning and memory. This study adds to the body of evidence that suggests the Mediterranean diet has a positive impact on brain health."

Comments

Re:And the next food craze starts

[SNRatio]

Whether or not research proves it to be the "best" diet for most people, the Mediterranean diet has been recommended and researched for ~50 years now. So not exactly a craze.

Re:And the next food craze starts

[raind]

Antibiotics and steroids come to mind.

Re: And the next food craze starts

[Rei]

Since when have nutritionists pushed starch? Fats were indeed treated as bad - first all fats because studies showed links between fat-rich diets and heart disease. It was later shown that it wasn't "all fats", just saturated fats. And nothing has changed that; it's still widely accepted my medical science that saturated fats are associated with heart disease. The problem was all in manufacturer responses. Manufacturers largely responded to requests for fat reduction not with increases in fiber, protein and healthy fats (monounsaturated, omega-3) as nutritionists preferred, but with with carbohydrate increases and replacing saturated fats with trans fats - both of which were on their own harmful, and in some cases worse.

The fact that the negative health effects of things like saturated fats were discovered later than the negative health effect was a consequence of them being little used previously but increasingly used after the health effects of saturated fats. So it's not negligence on the part of nutritionists, they were just investigating the health issues in the diets that were the most common at the time. To be fair, it would be nice if the food industry would do a lot more of the precautionary principle (including nutritionists).

Concerning this: note that you almost have to have either some dairy, egg, or meat in your diet; or, to take supplements. Because primarily of B12. It's not produced by plants. It's not even found in many unicellular species like spirulina. It's only produced by certain types of primary unicellular producers that are not generally consumed by humans.

Re: Rich People Diet

[hey!]

The unit cost doesn't begin to capture what's going on here. Meat is amazingly cheap if you consider what a meat animal is: an extraordinarily complex, balky, and inefficient converter of commodity crops like feed corn to concentrated protein. I don't say this because I'm anti-meat -- I love meat and eat a lot of it. But boneless pork chops for $3.99/pound are a by-product of federal agricultural policies that include over twenty billion dollars of subsidies.

The influence of industry political contributions distorts the US food supply, making commodity crops like corn, soy, and sugar beets over-plentiful and cheap and actually discouraging farmers from growing vegetables and fruit to be marketed directly to consumers. So it turns out that high quality produce, which is not subsidized, can actually cost more than meat.

Consider an apple. Unlike a peach (if you've never had an actual ripe peach off the tree you don't know what you're missing), apples ship and store extremely well. So it's not particularly remarkable that a Red Delicious apple cost only 25% as much on a weight basis as a boneless pork chop if you consider the labor inputs. It ought to cost even less.

The real problem is that "Red Delicious" as a term is a triumph of marketing mendacity. A Red Delicious is indeed red, but it tastes like Styrofoam. If you want a good eating apple, say a Honey Crisp, you'll be paying as much on a weight basis as you would for a pork chop. Last year Honey Crisps hit $4.50 a pound. And the tomato -- normal market price is about $0.75 per pound, but if you want a tomato that is marginally tastier than the plastic it's packaged in you've got to go for a hothouse tomato that cost twice that. And for a good tomato you're paying almost as much as you would for a piece of meat.

No wonder people hate vegetables. Very few people will buy a tomato if it costs as much as a pork chop, and since the pork chop is subsidized and tomatoes aren't, that means most people have never tasted a good tomato. Or a really good peach. Many have never even tasted a good apple.