Diet modifications -- including more wine and cheese -- may help reduce cognitive decline, study suggests

 

The foods we eat may have a direct impact on our cognitive acuity in our later years. This is the key finding of an Iowa State University research study spotlighted in an article published in the November 2020 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

 

The study was spearheaded by principal investigator, Auriel Willette, an assistant professor in Food Science and Human Nutrition, and Brandon Klinedinst, a Neuroscience PhD candidate working in the Food Science and Human Nutrition department at Iowa State. The study is a first-of-its-kind large scale analysis that connects specific foods to later-in-life cognitive acuity.

 

Willette, Klinedinst and their team analyzed data collected from 1,787 aging adults (from 46 to 77 years of age, at the completion of the study) in the United Kingdom through the UK Biobank, a large-scale biomedical database and research resource containing in-depth genetic and health information from half-a-million UK participants. The database is globally accessible to approved researchers undertaking vital research into the world's most common and life-threatening diseases.

 

Participants completed a Fluid Intelligence Test (FIT) as part of touchscreen questionnaire at baseline (compiled between 2006 and 2010) and then in two follow-up assessments (conducted from 2012 through 2013 and again between 2015 and 2016). The FIT analysis provides an in-time snapshot of an individual's ability to "think on the fly."

 

Participants also answered questions about their food and alcohol consumption at baseline and through two follow-up assessments. The Food Frequency Questionnaire asked participants about their intake of fresh fruit, dried fruit, raw vegetables and salad, cooked vegetables, oily fish, lean fish, processed meat, poultry, beef, lamb, pork, cheese, bread, cereal, tea and coffee, beer and cider, red wine, white wine and champaign and liquor.

 

Here are four of the most significant findings from the study:

 

Cheese, by far, was shown to be the most protective food against age-related cognitive problems, even late into life;

The daily consumption of alchohol, particularly red wine, was related to improvements in cognitive function;

Weekly consumption of lamb, but not other red meats, was shown to improve long-term cognitive prowess; and

Excessive consumption of salt is bad, but only individuals already at risk for Alzheimer's Disease may need to watch their intake to avoid cognitive problems over time.

"I was pleasantly surprised that our results suggest that responsibly eating cheese and drinking red wine daily are not just good for helping us cope with our current COVID-19 pandemic, but perhaps also dealing with an increasingly complex world that never seems to slow down," Willette said. "While we took into account whether this was just due to what well-off people eat and drink, randomized clinical trials are needed to determine if making easy changes in our diet could help our brains in significant ways."

 

Klinedinst added, "Depending on the genetic factors you carry, some individuals seem to be more protected from the effects of Alzheimers, while other seem to be at greater risk. That said, I believe the right food choices can prevent the disease and cognitive decline altogether. Perhaps the silver bullet we're looking for is upgrading how we eat. Knowing what that entails contributes to a better understanding of Alzheimer's and putting this disease in a reverse trajectory."

 

Willette and Klinedinst acknowledge the valuable contributions of the other members of the research team: Scott Le, Colleen Pappas, Nathan Hoth, Amy Pollpeter and Qian Wang in the Iowa State department of Food Science and Human Nutrition; Brittany Larsen, Neuroscience graduate program at Iowa State; Yueying Wang and Li Wang, department of Statistics at Iowa State; Shan Yu, department of Statistics, University of Virginia; Karin Allenspach, department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences at Iowa State; Jonathan Mochel, department of Biomedical Sciences at Iowa State; and David Bennett, Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center, Rush Medical Center, Rush University.

New modified wheat could help tackle global food shortage

 

Researchers at the University of York have created a new modified wheat variety that increases grain production by up to 12%.

Wheat is one of the most important food crops in the world, providing 20% of human calories; with ever increasing global food demand, increasing crop yield is critically important.

 

Wheat breeders work hard to increase yield to meet global demand, but since the 'green revolution' of the 1960s, the rate of yield increase has been slowing and is currently less than 1% per year.

 

Most improvements have been made by breeding varieties that produce higher numbers of grain, but it should also be possible to increase yield by producing plants with bigger grains. When this has been achieved, however, it is accompanied by a decrease in grain numbers.

 

Researchers at the University of York have now resolved this issue by directly modifying the growth of the young developing grain by increasing the amount of a protein that controls growth rates in plants.

 

This resulted in plants that produced grain that are up to 12% bigger than in the conventional variety. In field experiments conducted by their collaborators in Chile, they found that there was no decrease in grain number, resulting in an increase in yield.

 

Professor Simon McQueen-Mason, from the University of York's Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP) at the Department of Biology, said: "Experts predict that we need to increase global food production by 50% by 2030 in order to meet demand from population growth. The negative impacts of climate change on crop yields are making this even more challenging. While researchers are working hard to meet this challenge, there remains a lot to do."

 

"Attempts to increase the yield of wheat have been thwarted by the apparent trade-off between grain size and grain number. We decided to side-step this complex control system by giving a boost to the natural growth system that controls the size of plant tissues.

 

"We did this by increasing the levels of a protein called expansin, which is a major determinant of growth in plants. We targeted this modification so that it was confined to developing wheat grain, and are delighted by the results."

 

Research partners at the Universidad Austral de Chile conducted field experiments that demonstrated the effectiveness of the plants under agricultural conditions.

 

The team are now looking at ways to make this research accessible to farmers and the wider industry to help inform their decisions on crop production.

 

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