What's up with the MIND diet?

It's been, like, forever since we began our vigil for the results of the MIND Diet Trial.  This was a collaboration between Rush University, the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, and Brigham and Women's Hospital.  We were promised results by April 2021.  But what have we so far?  Not much.  I'm sure this is a casualty of covid-19, but we're not getting updates from anyone.  ClinicalTrials.gov was updated in March 2022, but I couldn't figure out what was updated.  

You will recall from Beating the Dementia Monster that the MIND diet is a modification of the popular Mediterranean and DASH diets, both of which have been correlated with improved brain health.  (MIND stands for "Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay.")  There have been some important and very positive trials of the MIND diet, but the scientific consensus is that the earlier results must be replicated in a randomized trial.  That was going to be the MIND Diet Trial that we're still waiting on.

So, in the absence of single randomized controlled trial (the gold standard), what do we actually have that might still be good evidence of the superiority of the MIND diet for the brain?  My sister sent me this article documenting a review of the existing literature of what we know about the diet's effectiveness.  It's not exactly what we're looking for, but it's still pretty substantial.

The authors searched through 135 studies and found 14 articles that met their criteria for credibility.  All of the studies found the MIND diet was superior to both the Mediterranean and DASH diets when it came to brain health.  The authors specifically concluded, "All of the included studies indicated that adherence to the MIND diet was positively associated with specific domains, but not all, of cognition and global cognitive function ... in older adults. MIND diet was superior to other plant-rich diets including Mediterranean, Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension [DASH], Pro-Vegetarian and Baltic Sea diets, for improving cognition. Adherence to the MIND diet may possibly be associated with an improved cognitive function in older adults. MIND diet may be superior to other plant-rich diets for improving cognition." 

What sets the MIND diet apart that might explain its apparent superiority?  The best I can make of it is how the MIND diet stays away from cheese, butter, margarine, and red meat.

Of course, I haven't been waiting for the study results to decide whether to apply this diet or not.  I've been following it since 2016, and so it's just what I do.

How much has it helped me?  I have no way of knowing.  All I do know is that applying the whole Dementia Toolkit has helped me immensely.