"you need a balanced diet of protein, fats and carbohydrates," Roberts said, perhaps one like the Mediterranean diet, which relies heavily on poultry, vegetables and healthy fats"
I wondered why since this didn't seem to have anything much to do with a Med diet.
This paper is behind a pay wall but an earlier analysis (same researcher's, same cohort) looked at the associations of the Mediterranean diet (MeDi) components and mild cognitive impairment finding that Vegetables, unsaturated fats, and a high MeDi* score may be beneficial to cognitive function .
(* they give a zero score to those eating more than the median level of vegetables, legumes, fruits, whole grain cereal, and fish etc and a score of 1 if people eat less than the median, those that eat more than the median level of meat, dairy products get a score of 1 and those that eat less a score of 0 . They do this for each item and the lower the score, the more a person is said to adhere to the Med type of diet)
In this study they also found that there was a trend in that increasing calorie intake was associated with increasing levels of mild cognitive impairment.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2889256/
I think that this has been taken up in this latest analysis ie the one mentioned by Cowboy Jim .
The very first phrase of abstract is '
High caloric intake has been associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment'
The final statement in the conclusion is '
A dietary pattern with relatively high caloric intake from carbohydrates and low caloric intake from fat and proteins may increase the risk of MCI or dementia in elderly persons.'
We know from the previous analysis (same people) that those who ate a diet containing vegetables and un sat fats in particular and a diet more likely to include vegetables/legumes/fruit and fish were less likely to develop moderate cognitive impairment. That makes me think that the type of carbohydrates they were eating were more likely to be those that contain lot's of sugar, were highly processed white flour, maybe lots of white bread and biscuits to fill up with ie the type of diet eaten by elderly people who can't afford a more balanced diet and those who have to fall back on highly processed foods because they are physically less able to prepare less processed foods.
There has been another very recent (full text available) study in Australia that also found that those who ate a more med type diet were less likely to develop MCI
http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v2/n10 ... 1291a.html
One thing worth pointing out though is that both in this study and the American one, relatively few ate this way and maybe those that did are those who have always been more 'health' concious.
