Does the MIND Diet Really Prevent Neurodegenerative Disease?

Diet gets a lot of attention when it comes to preventing neurodegenerative disease, because improving it is one of the few simple, preventative actions we can all take.

This is exactly what motivated some researchers to devise what’s called the “MIND” diet, which was specifically designed to protect against cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases. But does it really work?

Developing the MIND Diet

The full name of the MIND diet is the Mediterranean-DASH Diet Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay. Combining elements from the popular Mediterranean diet and the blood pressure focused DASH diet, it also incorporates other foods that evidence suggests help with dementia.

Broadly, it suggests eating:

• Vegetables, especially leafy greens

• Berries

• Whole grains

• Beans and legumes

• Nuts

• Poultry

• Non-fried fish

• Extra virgin olive oil

Initial research scored participants on how well their diet matched the MIND diet, and found a link between MIND diet score and reduced cognitive decline with age.

Testing the MIND Diet

The same research group also tested how the MIND diet impacted Alzheimer’s risk. The methodology and cohort were basically the same – based in Chicago, n = 923, mainly white and non-Hispanic – except they used the participants’ annual Alzheimer’s assessment instead of their global cognitive score. As in the previous study, they compared the MIND diet with the Mediterranean and DASH diets.

The study suggested strong adherence to all of these diets reduced Alzheimer’s risk, but MIND outperformed the others for people who only partially followed the recommendations.  

However, a randomized controlled trial of the MIND diet came to a conflicting conclusion. The test pitted the MIND diet against a control diet (n = 604) with a mild calorie restriction, and found that both diets improved global cognition scores. People following MIND scored a little better, but the difference wasn’t statistically significant.

Does the MIND Diet Really Work?

The best answer to this question comes from a meta-analysis focusing on dementia in general . The authors combined three studies for a cohort analysis (n = 18,136) and 11 studies for the meta-analysis (n = 224,049). Both analyses found that the mind diet is associated with lower dementia risk in older adults.

More evidence is still needed – especially for non-Western populations and specific types of dementia – but overall, it does seem effective.