The MIND Diet trial

What does this mean for the future of dietary interventions for disease prevention?

A brand new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (linked here) is one of the largest RCTs (randomised controlled trial) ever run on dietary interventions for disease prevention.

Photo by Milad Fakurian

The results showed absolutely no difference between the control arm and the intervention arm who ate a special version of the Mediterranean Diet and DASH (Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension) combined, aimed at brain health and named ‘MIND’.

This may seem like a big disappointment for the ‘food is medicine’ believers, but I don’t think so. The participants were all overweight and had a family history of dementia. They were all motivated to improve their health; adherence to the trial was high and both groups did well at sticking to advice and lost an average of 5kg. In fact, both groups saw an improvement in brain function.

Being in a trial like this when you know the outcome is a reduced risk of dementia is clearly a positive motivator to make changes that do improve your brain function. It didn’t clearly show that the specifics of this new ‘MIND’ diet were that valuable and that a general approach geared towards a good diversity of plants, avoiding unhealthy UPFs as much as possible and reducing snacking are important.

We also know that exercise and sleep are crucial for the prevention of dementia, so the advice to move every day, have a good regular sleep schedule and eat for your gut microbes is still good advice.

For more of my thoughts on this, you can listen to the audio below.