Dietary Patterns and Brain Aging: Enthusiasm Before Evidence?

Abstract

Diet quality has been proposed as a determinant of brain aging, which has attracted considerable attention given the current global demographic shift toward older age. Comprehensive global systematic reviews that have explored dietary patterns and brain aging highlight a recurrent theme. Any healthy dietary pattern that includes higher consumption of vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, fish and/or seafood, and unsaturated vegetable oils/fats and lower consumption of red and processed meats and sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with lower risk of age-related neurodegenerative disease. The biologic mechanism(s) underlying these cognitive protective effects are unknown. Furthermore, it is unlikely that consumption of a healthy dietary pattern alone will achieve clinically relevant success in reducing risk of cognitive decline and/or dementia given that there is no single risk factor that accounts for the variation in brain aging.