Healthy eaters are cognitively younger

At the age of 65, people who eat healthy are just as cognitively strong as 63-year-olds with a less healthy diet. Cognitive functions also deteriorate more slowly in healthy eaters. The older, the greater the difference in cognition between healthy and unhealthy eaters. This is evident from a study by the RIVM among more than three thousand Doetinchemmers who were followed for twenty years.

Estimated 290,000 Dutch people have dementia. Lots of studies show a link between a healthy lifestyle and cognitive functions in old age. This cohort study, which has followed the behavior and health of participants for over 25 years, confirms the assumption that healthy eating is good for the brain.

Room for improvement

Whether the participants are one Mediterranean diet followed, the Dutch Wheel of Five or the World Health Organization opinions, they scored better on the tests than their peers with a less healthy diet. So you don’t have to live in the Mediterranean or follow a Mediterranean diet to stay mentally healthy longer with a healthy diet. Guidelines for a good diet contain broadly the same elements everywhere: lots of vegetables, fruit and whole grains, little saturated fat, little processed and red meat, and little salt and sugar.

Incidentally, the healthiest group did not eat strictly according to the guidelines. On average, they scored 80 points out of 130 for healthy eating. “So there is still room for improvement among the healthier eaters. Then the effect could possibly become stronger ”, says researcher Monique Verschuren.

Not only memory, but also the flexibility and speed with which the brain processes information were tested. Furthermore, participants were questioned about diseases and conditions, measured and weighed and they completed questionnaires about their diet.

People with a higher education generally also eat healthier

People who are more educated, who are physically active, smoke less often and are less overweight, generally also eat healthier. Still, the link between diet and cognition remained after the researchers filtered out the other factors. In healthy eaters with a genetically determined higher risk of Alzheimer’s, the researchers saw more cognitive gains than average.

Also read: Healthy living as medicine

“Most people know that a healthy diet is important to prevent cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. It is less known that you can also slow down cognitive decline and reduce the risk of dementia, ”says Verschuren.

Jaap Seidell, professor of nutrition and health at the VU, also thinks this is the most important message from the research. He was not involved, but was one of the initiators of the Doetinchem study thirty years ago. “It is good to emphasize that the dietary guidelines are not only there to prevent health problems now, but that a healthy lifestyle also has a long-term effect.”

When asked about the limitations of this study, he says: “It remains epidemiology: in large population studies you can never exclude all factors that cause unhealthy behavior. But in combination with experiments that show what happens with overeating in the brain, for example, it is increasingly likely that a healthy lifestyle has an effect on mental health. ”

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