How good is that Mediterranean diet anyway?

About three and a half years ago, we posted about a study that found the MIND diet might be good for brain health, but the Mediterranean diet might not be so helpful.  This seemed to deny a number of "longitudinal" studies that correlated the Mediterranean diet with a lower incidence or later onset of dementia.  

In Beating the Dementia Monster, we noted that longitudinal studies that follow a population -- correlating behaviors with the appearance of dementia -- must be carefully controlled for confounding factors.  For example, people who eat a healthy diet are much more likely to get good exercise.  So if a study of diet finds a good outcome, was it due to the diet or the exercise?  Or both?  Or some other uncontrolled factor?  Studies looking for correlation between diet and brain health have produced a range of conflicting results.  Some explain this as evidence of variation in how confounding factors (like exercise) are controlled.

Researchers are all quick to point out that, whether or not the Mediterranean diet helps with dementia, it is still profoundly important in the control of other diseases, such as metabolic syndrome.

A recent 20-year study from Lund University in Sweden, published in the journal Neurology, appeared to find that the Mediterranean diet had little influence on the incidence of dementia.  In reading the material, it appears to me that they were more deliberate in controlling confounding factors compared to other studies.

This article in Medical News Today evaluates the research and recalls the same research we cited in our 2019 post.  The upshot is that the Mediterranean diet may not help with preventing, slowing, or stopping Alzheimer's disease, but there is still plenty of evidence that the MIND diet does.  

But where is The MIND Diet Trial we discussed in Beating the Dementia Monster?  Here's what their web site says.  And according to the NIH's "ClinicalTrials.org," they have no results yet.  They were supposed to have published their results two years ago.  I'm thinking they remain a victim of covid.

There have been several promising studies of the MIND diet, so I'm sticking with it.  But the MIND Diet Trial seems to me to be so well designed that, once they can get their results out, we'll have much better confidence in it.  I'm sure it will fare better than the Mediterranean diet.