A new European study has revealed clear links between eating more plant-based products and fending off cognitive impairment in old age. In fact, the most-highly recommended foods on the study’s list are among the same ones that other researchers have identified as beneficial to your metabolism…
The elderly do better on the Mediterranean Diet – which closely follows the eating
habits more and more researchers are recommending we all adopt.
Every month – in some seasons, every week – there seems to be another learned study that produces new proof that eating more plant-based foods can help you live healthier, live longer and live more fully emotionally. That last element – living more fully emotionally, is the focus of the study we’re going to talk about today, and it’s good news for many older folks who suffer quality of life issues related to dementia.
What they did
Researchers at the University of Barcelona (UB) followed, over 12 years, the health journeys of 842 people aged over 65 in the Bordeaux and Dijon regions of France). The study analysed the relationship between the metabolism of dietary components, intestinal microbiota, endogenous metabolism and cognitive impairment. In plain English, team member Mireia Urpí-Sardà explains, “What we analysed in the cohorts under study is the modulating role of the diet in the risk of suffering cognitive impairment.”
What they found
The results revealed a protective association between metabolites from cocoa, coffee, mushrooms and red wine; the microbial metabolism of polyphenol-rich foods (apple, cocoa, green tea, blueberries, oranges or pomegranates); and cognitive impairment in the elderly.
In short, lots of fresh fruits and veggies and other foods high in compounds such as polyphenols, which have been shown to aid the metabolism as a whole and reduce systemic inflammation, are also beneficial to the brain.
The takeaway
According to an abstract of the study report, “Changes in lifestyle and diet are decisive as a strategy to prevent cognitive deterioration and its progression in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and other dementias.”
Team leader Cristina Andrés-Lacueva predicts, “A higher intake of fruits, vegetables and [other] plant-based foods provides polyphenols and other bioactive compounds that could help reduce the risk of cognitive decline due to ageing.”
My take
Sounds easy enough. I’m all for everyone eating more fresh fruits and veggies in accord with the latest Canada’s Food Guide and similar recommendations by other North American and European governments. You simply fill half your plate with fresh fruits and veggies, one quarter with proteins (meat, dairy, legumes), and the other quarter with whole grains.
At first glance that sounds like a great way to eat, and an enjoyable one, too. But most folks in the developed western world don’t eat like that. And they’ve shown a marked reluctance to change their long-established dietary habits and preferences.
What we do eat is a recipe for chronic illness and life-shortening conditions including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers. Why don’t the masses change their eating habits and take advantage of the well-known benefits of a healthy diet?
One reason is, we are, by our nature, lazy. And changing anything takes effort.
We’re addicted to convenience (closely related to our laziness) – And that leads us to eat packaged and processed and fast foods which are increasingly being recognised as major dangers to our health.
We are hard-wired by our evolution to crave salt, sugar and fat. And we continue to stuff ourselves with them, even though they are now easy – perhaps too easy – to get.
We remain strongly acculturated to animal protein – chiefly red meat and poultry – when we’d be much better off nutritionally with fish and veggie proteins. On the positive side, rising prices for animal proteins are constantly working in favour of the average person. But there’s no clear evidence that large numbers are even trying veggie-based protein products, much less making them a regular part of their diets.
Current relatively high prices for produce (and supply line shortages due to the COVID pandemic) just amplify this problem. Folks will almost always buy what’s cheapest and easiest over what’s more costly and harder to prepare – even if the pricier, healthier option is a lot better for them.
But more to the point…
If we as humans are prey to all the temptations and follies I’ve just enumerated, we become even more set in our ways as we grow older. I believe (and this is just from my own observation and experience) that if we as individuals don’t get off our every-widening butts in middle age – preferably before – we’ll never reap the benefits of a healthy diet – especially in old age. Changing your unhealthy habits now – say, in your 50s – will lay the necessary groundwork for a longer, healthier and more emotionally fulfilling life. Changing earlier is all the better.
Once the heart disease, diabetes, cancer and cognitive impairment set in – from your 50s on up – they’re extremely hard if not impossible to reverse!
~ Maggie J.