Will This Diet Save Your MIND?

     We went to the Charleston Crab House for dinner last night with some friends. I had a side salad (more on that later) and a dish with scallops and mahi mahi. B had grilled shrimp. There's something about being on the beach that makes you want to eat seafood.

     Honestly, my initial exposure to seafood was not a good one. I grew up Catholic, and back then Catholics were not allowed to eat meat on Fridays. My mother was never particularly interested in cooking, so in our family we had fishsticks or some other kind of breaded fish from the freezer.

     My father was not Catholic, so while he usually ate fish on Fridays along with the rest of the family, sometimes my mother served him a hamburger instead. When we kids complained about that, he'd tell us that fish was good for us. It was brain food. And he wanted us to grow up to be smart and successful.

     How smart we all became is up for debate. But whatever intellectual failings we suffered, it wasn’t for lack of fish. And now, despite my troubled introduction to seafood, I like fish . . . especially when I'm at the beach.

     Besides, I read recently in the Tufts University "Health & Nutrition Letter" that my dad was right. At least in certain circumstances, seafood is indeed brain food. Researchers from Tufts University, in a nine-year study of close to 500 older adults, found that those consuming the most fish – three servings a week – were at significantly lower risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

     Another researcher, Martha Clare Morris of the Rush University Memory and Aging Project, concluded that people who “consumed fish once a week or more had a 60 percent less risk of Alzheimer’s disease compared with those who rarely or never ate fish.”

     One concern about fish is the levels of mercury in seafood. Researchers did find that those who consumed a lot of fish had higher levels of mercury in their brains. But there was no evidence that higher mercury levels had any negative effects on older people.

     Morris has now come up with a full anti-Alzheimer's diet, called the MIND Diet, which stands for Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay. (As if that's not enough of a mouthful, DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.)

     The MIND Diet is designed to reduce the risk of dementia, as well as heart disease and diabetes. The diet recommends consuming lots of fish and poultry. It also says (here's where the side salad comes in) that we should eat leafy green vegetables like salads, and other vegetables, as well as whole grains, berries, beans, and an occasional glass of wine. Meanwhile, it cautions us to avoid butter, cheese, red meat, fried foods and sweets. The claim is that this diet can lower our risk of Alzheimer's by 50 percent if we follow it strictly, and by a third even if we only follow it (ahem) half-heartedly.

     Pregnant and breastfeeding women and young children are still advised to limit their consumption of fish high in mercury – especially tilefish, shark, swordfish, mackerel and white (albacore) tuna. But for older adults the benefits of seafood far outweigh the risks from mercury. And as the MIND Diet suggests, the benefits are not limited to the brain. The American Heart Association advises consuming at least two meals a week with seafood.

     However, it seems that supplements of fish oil or omega-3s do not necessarily offer the same benefits. One five-year trial of more than 3000 participants reported no benefits from omega-3 supplements. Apparently the process of how fish benefits our brains and our bodies is more complicated than just delivering a dose of omega-3s.

     So eat up your fish, with some vegetables and maybe a glass of wine. I don't recommend the fishsticks. But the scallops and mahi mahi are fine.