Breakfast, food, sausages, blood sausage, eggs. – HALBERGMAN – FILE
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MADRID, Apr 23 (EUROPA PRESS) –
A healthy diet can benefit the brain, but according to new research published in ‘Neurology,’ the journal of the American Academy of Neurology, suggests that it may not only be about the food you eat, but also the food you eat. eat together what may be associated with your risk of dementia.
The study examined ‘food webs’ and found that people whose diets consisted mainly of highly processed meats, starchy foods like potatoes, cookies, or cakes, were more likely to have dementia years later than people who ate a wider variety. healthy food.
“There is a complex interconnection of food in a person’s diet, and it is important to understand how these different connections, or food webs, can affect the brain because diet could be a promising way to prevent dementia,” says the author of the study, Cécilia Samieri, from the University of Bordeaux in France.
“Several studies have shown that eating a healthier diet, for example, a diet rich in green leafy vegetables, berries, nuts, whole grains and fish, can reduce a person’s risk of dementia,” he says. Those studies focused on the quantity and frequency of food. Our study went one step further in looking at food webs and found important differences in the ways food was consumed together in people who developed dementia and those who did not. “
The study involved 209 people with an average age of 78 who had dementia and 418 people, matched for age, sex, and educational level, who did not have dementia.
Participants had completed a food questionnaire five years earlier describing what types of food they ate during the year and how often, from less than once a month to more than four times a day. They also had medical checkups every two to three years. The researchers used the data from the food questionnaire to compare which foods patients with and without dementia often ate together.
They found that while there was little difference in the amount of individual foods that people ate, food groups or networks in general differed substantially between people who had dementia and those who did not.
“Processed meats were a ‘hub’ in the food webs of people with dementia,” Samieri explains. “People who developed dementia were more likely to combine highly processed meats like sausages, deli meats, and pates with starchy foods like potatoes, alcohol, and snacks like cookies and cakes. “
“This may suggest how often processed meat is combined with other unhealthy foods, rather than the average amount, they may be important for dementia risk,” he continues. “For example, people with dementia were When they ate processed meat, they were more likely to accompany it with potatoes, and people without dementia were more likely to accompany meat with more diverse foods, including fruits and vegetables and seafood. “
In general, people without dementia were more likely to have great diversity in their diet, as evidenced by many small food webs that generally included healthier foods, such as fruits and vegetables, seafood, poultry, or meat.
“We discovered that greater dietary diversity and greater inclusion of a variety of healthy foods are related to less dementia,” Samieri notes. “In fact, we found differences in food webs that could be seen years before will diagnose people with dementia. Our findings suggest that studying diet by looking at food webs can help untangle the complexity of diet and biology in health and disease. “
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