Uh oh ... MIND Diet Good, Mediterrnean Diet Maybe Not so Helpful?

In Beating the Dementia Monster we discussed the three favored diets for brain health: the DASH diet, the MIND diet, and their granddaddy, the Mediterranean diet.  On December 17, 2018 I posted two articles about studies correlating diet with the development of AD -- one a Finnish study and the other a British study.  The Finnish study failed to find cognitive improvement over a two year period from an improved diet that correlated with the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet.  The researchers discussed the MIND diet, but they did not evaluate the potential of the MIND diet in their study. 

The British study found remarkable improvement in hippocampal volume that they correlated with improved diet over an eleven year period.  It was difficult to understand from the methodology in the British study what their favored diet resembled -- Mediterranean, DASH, or MIND.  They scored people's food intake based on the Alternative Healthy Eating Index, which favored green leafy vegetables over carbohydrate-rich foods -- among several other factors.  I could not find a way to correlate the information in the report with any particular diet.

Now there's an interesting new study in the current issue of Alzheimer's and Dementia; the Journal of the Alzheimer's Association.  The study is "MIND not Mediterranean diet related to 12-year incidence of cognitive impairment in an Australian longitudinal cohort study."  It acknowledged studies in the US that correlated diet with brain health, but posited a need to determine if the results of American studies can be generalized outside of the US.  For example, in Australia.

The conclusion was that they can, but ... the study failed to find a correlation between cognitive improvement and the Mediterranean diet after 12 years.  On the other hand, it did find a substantial correlation for the MIND diet.  Note that the Finnish study we discussed in one of my December 17 posts also found no correlation between cognitive improvement and the Mediterranean diet after two years.  It did not evaluate the MIND diet.

I've always treated the three diets as essentially co-equal with respect to brain health because they all knock out the carbs and red meat while favoring green leafy vegetables, fish, and poultry.  But maybe I should fashion my eating more after the MIND diet than the Mediterranean diet.  I already do to a certain extent.  I eat blueberries every day and one slice of whole grain bread that I would not otherwise be eating.  But I do eat some plain cream cheese for snacks which is not on the MIND menu, even if it might be on the Mediterranean menu.  And I don't eat beans, but maybe I should.

This article from the professional journal Today's Dietician compares the Mediterranean and MIND diets without finding much difference in comparative outcomes.  (It does cite research that found favorable outcomes for both diets.)

The other thing hanging out there in my mind is how well the studies supporting these diets have been controlled for exercise.  From what I can see, only the research supporting the MIND diet claims to have controlled for exercise, and some have criticized how well that was done.  Do people in Australia who follow the MIND diet get more exercise than people who follow the Mediterranean diet?  It may seem like a silly question, but when questions like these are probed we sometimes get surprising answers.