In recent years, there is increasing evidence that lifestyle factors, including diet, exercise, sleep and stress, strongly influence the risk of dementia. When it comes to nutrition, experts say ultra-processed foods — such as hot dogs, French fries, chips, soda, cakes and ice cream — can cause cognitive decline. And now a new study shows us a way of eating that actually reduces the risk of dementia.

Published in Journal of the American Medical Association1, this study evaluated data from more than 8,000 middle-aged and older men and women from 11 cohort studies. All participants started the study period without dementia. The researchers administered a survey to collect dietary data from participants, who were each scored between 0 and 15 based on how well they adhered to a dietary pattern defined as The Mediterranean DASH diet for neurodegenerative delay2, or the MIND diet. The higher the score, the more their diet matched the MIND diet. The average score of the participants was 8.3 out of 15.

At the end of the study, participants were screened for dementia. Of the more than 8,000 participants, about 775 developed dementia. The results showed that the more closely a participant followed the MIND diet, the less likely they were to develop dementia during the study period. In fact, participants with the highest scores were 17% less likely to develop dementia compared to participants with the lowest scores.