- A new study that tracked diet and cognitive ability across seven decades found that individuals with a healthier diet had better cognitive outcomes over time.
- The research involved a cohort of more than 3,000 individuals living in the UK born in 1946.
- The findings suggest that eating a healthy diet consistently in childhood and midlife is important to maintaining brain health in old age.
Diet is an important part of keeping your brain sharp as you age. New research indicates that the earlier you start eating healthy, the better.
In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers tracked the diet and eating habits of more than 3,000 individuals living in the UK and correlated it with their cognitive ability for seven decades. Those who had the highest-quality diets tended to have better cognitive ability over time compared to their peers who ate unhealthy diets.
“Cognitive decline can begin at age 65. But, there’s this long latency period, maybe 10 to 15 years prior to symptoms showing up, that those brain changes can already be happening. So our thinking was that diet much earlier than age 65 might be an important factor in what’s happening in our later life cognition. And our preliminary findings suggest that may be the case,” Kelly Cara, PhD, a recent graduate of the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and author of the research, told Healthline.
Cara presented her findings this week at NUTRITION 2024, the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition. The findings have not yet been published in a scientific journal and are considered preliminary.
Nonetheless, they are compelling and have practical implications for anyone concerned about maintaining brain health through diet. Experts say eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, fish, and whole grains — such as the Mediterranean diet — is a good place to start.
“The findings are consistent with similar studies and truly exemplify the importance that diet plays early in life to impact health (in this case, cognitive health) later in life,” said Kristin Kirkpatrick, MS RD, a nutritionist at the Cleveland Clinic, and co-author of Regenerative Health. She was not affiliated with the study.