By Paul von Zielbauer
Two facts about aging that should make any health-minded person over 45 sit up:
1) Forty-two percent of Americans over age 55 will get a neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia.
2) The vast majority of these cognitive diseases are not hereditary but are instead caused primarily by what are known as “environmental factors” in midlife. The Big 3 affecting healthy aging generally and brain health specifically are: the food you eat, how much and how well you sleep, and how often you move your body.
Today’s column will examine the food portion of that brain-health equation. Because, without exaggerating, taking a few relatively simple but important changes to how and what you eat could add years to your healthy life span.
That was the main takeaway from my recent interview with Annie Fenn, a medical doctor, trained chef and author of “The Brain Health Kitchen: Preventing Alzheimer’s Through Food.” During our hour-long conversation, Fenn mentioned five specific steps that people 45 and older should follow to help keep their brains sharp into the later years:
No. 1: Eat fewer ultra-processed foods and more fresh, whole foods.
The standard American diet is so thoroughly infected with ultra-processed foods, or UPFs, that avoiding them requires retraining your body and mind to eat differently.
UPFs are typically packaged foods with long lists of industrial ingredients that you won’t recognize unless you’re a food scientist. UPFs are most often found in the middle aisles of grocery stores: cereal, pasta, salted nuts, canned soup, lunch meat, sliced cheeses, seasoning packets, chips and dips — the list is depressingly long.
To put it bluntly, UPFs shave days, weeks, months or years off your life, depending on how much and how often you eat them. To wean yourself off them, try cutting one UPF type out of your diet every week, and replace it with a healthy, whole food. For instance, instead of cereal, try low-fat Greek yogurt (with blueberries and muesli); instead of chips, munch on carrots, bell peppers and other fresh vegetables; instead of lunch meat, make a sandwich with a seasoned chicken breast, steak or canned tuna.
If these changes feel like too big a hassle, consider Fenn’s next brain-healthy food tip.
No. 2: Get to know your food environment and your reasons for changing it.
Your food environment is made up of the edible items you have in your life spaces — your home, car or regular fast-food joint. If your food environment is filled with cereals, lunch meats, Nutella, chips, ice cream and sugary drinks, well, you’ve got some choices to make between eating healthier and living longer … or not.
For healthy and relatively affordable staples of a healthy food environment, Fenn recommends the standard Mediterranean diet, which relies mostly, but not entirely, on plant-based proteins, vitamins and nutrients.
But first, take a step back: Before embarking on a new food regimen, think hard about why you want to eat healthier. Understanding your motivations clearly helps provide the willpower required to slowly change how and what you’ve been eating for the past several decades.
Your reasons for eating healthier are deeply personal. Maybe you have plans, like I do, to be around for as long as possible (and in good health) for your children or grandchildren. Maybe one of your parents suffers from a cognitive impairment that you don’t want to repeat. Or maybe you want to see more of the world before your time in it ends.
No. 3: Start snacking on berries, nuts and seeds — three times a week.
The Mediterranean diet is a food pyramid based on vegetables, beans and legumes, berries, nuts and seeds. Meat and fish are also included, but higher up the pyramid and, thus, consumed less often.
Fenn recommends, and a growing body of research strongly suggests that eating a few handfuls of raw nuts — walnuts, especially — a few times a week provides many brain-vital vitamins and nutrients. A cup of berries as a regular snack also provides antioxidants and other benefits that counteract effects of aging.
Raw pumpkin seeds are another superfood for anyone over 45.
No. 4: Eat more beans and colorful vegetables and less meat and potatoes.
I’ve long followed what I assumed was a good Mediterranean diet, eating chicken breasts or salmon filets for dinner most evenings. But as Fenn pointed out, daily protein in the standard Mediterranean diet comes from beans and legumes, nuts and seeds, and even vegetables.
If the idea of eating beans regularly conjures notions of digestive distress, the solution, Fenn said, is to introduce them in small, weekly amounts. Your gut biome will become accustomed to them over time, and soon you’ll be able to eat ultra-healthy, bean-based meals.
No. 5: Understand and avoid AGEs.
Anyone over 45 needs to know about AGEs — advanced glycation end products — harmful compounds formed during the Maillard reaction, a process that occurs when sugars and proteins or fats react, often during cooking or within the body. AGEs are also known to accelerate the aging process. That buttery crust on your pan-fried steak? Loads of AGEs. Those roasted and salted nuts? AGEs galore.
The more direct your meat is to the source of cooking heat — think a barbecue grill fire — the more AGEs that piece of meat will have, Fenn told me. Instead of grilling or frying, she said she prepares her steak with a coating of pumpkin seeds.
When it comes to eating healthier for greater longevity, every lil’ bit helps. (Creators)