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

And the next food craze starts

[Opportunist]

It starts to remind me of the old times in the East Bloc where "scientists" came up with any sort of revelation every time something was in shortage or for some odd reason there was suddenly a surplus. You could bet your ass that the revelation was that eggs are an important source for any kind of vitamins but meat makes you sick.

Same shit now. What happened, did the olive harvest turn out to be the harvest of the century?

Re: And the next food craze starts

[Anonymous Coward]

You could drown in it.

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

[nine-times]

You're right that we keep getting contradictory information, but the problem often isn't that the studies are bad in themselves, it's that the reporting on the study is bad.

One group does a study that shows a correlation between diet and "brain shrinkage". That's all. One study finds some kind of statistical correlation. Further study is needed. First, the study should be replicated before really trusting the results. Someone would also have to hypothesize what the causal link is, and then study that, because (sorry, I know it has become a cliche, but...) correlation does not equal causation.

But ok, let's assume for the sake of argument that it's determined that the exact diet described here as the "Mediterranean diet" prevents "brain shrinkage". Ok. Now what? What is "brain shrinkage"? Is brain shrinkage bad? What are the negative effects of it? Are their positive effects of brain shrinkage? Oh, and are there other negative effects of the Mediterranean diet that outweigh the benefits of preventing brain shrinkage?

Nobody really knows. I'm sure an expert could provide some information in response to their answers, but they won't have a complete answer.

But reporters don't necessarily understand all of that, and in any case, that kind of nuanced and intelligent reporting won't sell ad time on CNN. You know what will grab people's attention? The headline, "Drinking olive oil will make you smarter!" So that's what they report, and suddenly the common wisdom is that we should all be guzzling a gallon of olive oil per day.

And then a few years later, there will be another study where there's some correlation between olive oil and an increased risk of some particular rare form of cancer. There will be all the same uncertainties and complications of interpreting the results of the study, but reporters won't report on the complications. There will just be a headline, "Olive oil causes cancer!" Now everyone decides we're supposed to cut olive oil our of our diets.

Science may eventually find that the studies themselves were flawed, or the results were misinterpreted, or the correlation was just a statistical anomaly. Or we may eventually find that there is a correlation, but the causal link is something unexpected. Maybe people who cook with olive oil are less likely to eat butter, and butter causes brain shrinkage. Or, it's possible, just possible, that olive oil does in fact help to prevent brain shrinkage as well as increase the risk of a rare form of cancer, but that it does each of these things to such a minor degree that it's not worth considering when choosing what to eat.

It's also true that some studies are bad. Unfortunately, we don't put much priority on repeating studies to confirm results. However, the far bigger problem is that most of our news outlets suck. Even the respectable ones like the BBC and New York Times are just awful. Honestly, I'm not sure how to improve them, because another big piece of the problem is that *we, the audience*, suck. We insist on clicking on clickbait, watching tabloid junk, and superstitiously believing whatever our chosen news outlet reports.

Re: And the next food craze starts

[AthanasiusKircher]

Since when have nutritionists pushed starch?

First off, the parent post didn't say "nutritionists push starch" -- the post referred to SPECIAL INTERESTS. And the post you're responding to specifically cited the food pyramid, which was endorsed by the U.S. government and nutritionists. The base of that pyramid (i.e., the largest portion of daily food intake) was "Bread, Cereal, Rice and Pasta."

This is what one of the leading nutritionists at the USDA said later about what happened in the 1980s:

When our version of the Food Guide came back to us revised, we were shocked to find that it was vastly different from the one we had developed. As I later discovered, the wholesale changes made to the guide by the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture were calculated to win the acceptance of the food industry. For instance, the Ag Secretary's office altered wording to emphasize processed foods over fresh and whole foods, to downplay lean meats and low-fat dairy choices because the meat and milk lobbies believed it'd hurt sales of full-fat products; it also hugely increased the servings of wheat and other grains to make the wheat growers happy. [...]

Where we, the USDA nutritionists, called for a base of 5-9 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables a day, it was replaced with a paltry 2-3 servings (changed to 5-7 servings a couple of years later because an anti-cancer campaign by another government agency, the National Cancer Institute, forced the USDA to adopt the higher standard). Our recommendation of 3-4 daily servings of whole-grain breads and cereals was changed to a whopping 6-11 servings forming the base of the Food Pyramid as a concession to the processed wheat and corn industries. Moreover, my nutritionist group had placed baked goods made with white flour -- including crackers, sweets and other low-nutrient foods laden with sugars and fats -- at the peak of the pyramid, recommending that they be eaten sparingly. To our alarm, in the "revised" Food Guide, they were now made part of the Pyramid's base.

Normally I'm not a believer in "conspiracy theories," but here we have the story told by a former director of nutrition at the USDA. To my knowledge, no one has come out to contradict her account in the years since she made those claims.

A wee joke

[Harold Halloway]

Q. What's the Scottish definition of a salad?
A. Cold chips.

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.