The brain loses about half a teaspoon of cells each year.
People eating a diet rich in vegetables, fruit, nuts, whole grains, dairy and fish have bigger brains, research concludes.
The best diet for the brain also had a limited intake of sugary drinks.
Diet could be one useful way of combating the natural shrinkage of the brain with age.
The brain loses around 3.6 millilitres of volume for each year of aging — that’s about half a teaspoon of brain cells.
Dr Meike W. Vernooij, who led the study, said:
“People with greater brain volume have been shown in other studies to have better cognitive abilities, so initiatives that help improve diet quality may be a good strategy to maintain thinking skills in older adults.
More research is needed to confirm these results and to examine the pathways through which diet can affect the brain.”
The Dutch study of 4,213 people asked people about their intake of vegetables, fruit, whole grain products, legumes, nuts, dairy, fish, tea, unsaturated fats and oils of total fats, red and processed meat, sugary beverages, alcohol and salt.
Scans determined their brain volume, white matter lesions and any brain bleeds.
The best diet was similar to the so-called ‘Mediterranean diet‘, which is also rich in fish, vegetables and nuts.
Those with a better diet had, on average, 2 millilitres more brain volume.
There wasn’t one food that was best for the brain, it was about the combination, Dr Vernooij said:
“There are many complex interactions that can occur across different food components and nutrients and according to our research, people who ate a combination of healthier foods had larger brain tissue volumes.”
The study was published in the journal Neurology (Croll et al., 2018).
