Where does this news come from?
What is the Mediterranean Diet?
The Mediterranean diet encompasses the traditional, healthy diet of countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, such as Italy, France, Greece and Spain.
- The diet varies from region to region, but always consists largely of vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes, whole grains, low-fat dairy products, olive oil, poultry and fish.
- Moderate alcohol consumption is also part of the Mediterranean diet (2).
Research on the Mediterranean diet and dementia
Scientific research into the prevention and treatment of dementia is not easy and has yielded disappointing results to date.
British scientific researchers investigated whether a diet with Mediterranean characteristics can protect against dementia (1).
- The researchers used data from 60.298 adults.
- They followed those people 9 years long up.
- At the start of the study, they registered their eating and living habits.
- During the further follow-up, they checked with whom dementia occurred.
- There were in total 882 cases of dementia.
- There were of those 336 in the group with one lage Mediterranean score one 245 in the group with one hoge mediterrane score.
- So the risk of dementia was 23% lager in the group with a high Mediterranean score.
- That suggests that a Mediterranean diet is a certain protection can offer against dementia.
- The researchers decided that Mediterranean diet may play a role in the prevention of dementia.
Bron
(1) Shannon OM, Ranson JM, Gregory S, et al. Mediterranean diet adherence is associated with lower dementia risk, independent of genetic predisposition: findings from the UK Biobank prospective cohort study. BMC Med. 2023 Mar 14;21(1):81.
How should you interpret this news?
Past research has clearly shown that a Mediterranean diet is helpful in the prevention of cancer and heart disease.
- So there is little doubt about the fact that such a diet health benefits offers.
Yet there are too issues with this research.
- The research is one observational study. That means it cannot prove causation.
- In this study comes dementia less frequently for group e a Mediterranean diet.
- However, this group is also more physically active, smokes less, is less obese and has a higher education.
- to the day factors were associated with a in the past lower risk of dementia.
- It therefore remains unclear why researchers are trying to an elementto isolate the power supply.
- In practice, you would have to convince 200 adults to adopt healthy eating and living habits to avoid one case of dementia. That puts into perspective the 23% drop a little bit.
- A ‘Mediterranean Diet’ consists actually not.
- For example, the diet in Tunisia differs from the diet in Spain.
- It’s more about one set of healthy nutrition principles.
- Mediterranean diet is:
- rich in singular unsaturated fatty acids (olive oil);
- low in saturated fatty acids (meat, cold cuts, butter and cheese);
- and rich in fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains (3).
Conclusion
A British study shows that people with a Mediterranean diet have almost a quarter less risk of dementia. However, these are usually also people who exercise more, have a healthier body weight, smoke less and have a higher education. It therefore remains difficult to isolate only eating habits from lifestyle habits in this kind of observational research. A correct conclusion is that healthy eating and living habits generally have benefits, including against dementia.