Eating a healthy diet early in life can set the stage for optimal brain function throughout life. A study of 3,059 people over 70 years found that eating a high-quality diet from childhood through middle age improved cognitive function and helped prevent dementia later in life.1
The study, presented at NUTRITION 2024, the annual meeting of the American College of Nutrition, followed participants from when they were 4 years old until they were 70 years old.
This comprehensive lifespan view allowed the researchers to identify potential links between diet and cognitive ability that may begin much earlier than previously thought, reinforcing the importance of eating nutritious foods from the start.
Healthy eating habits throughout your 70s linked to improved brain function
Study participants were from the 1946 British Birth Cohort, which has provided a wealth of information through surveys and tests over more than 75 years. This gave the researchers a unique opportunity to analyze dietary intake at five different time points and compare this with cognitive ability at seven different time points.
One of the most striking findings from this study was the close link between diet quality and general, or “overall,” cognitive ability. The researchers observed that only about 8 percent of those on the low-quality diet maintained high cognitive ability over time. Meanwhile, only 7 percent of those on the high-quality diet maintained lower cognitive ability compared to their peers.
“These early findings broadly support current public health guidance that establishing healthy eating patterns early in life is important to maintain and support lifelong health,” study author Dr. Kelly Kara said in a news release.2 Cognitive ability has a significant impact on quality of life and independence in older age.
Between ages 68 and 70, those with the highest cognitive ability had significantly better retention of working memory, processing speed, and overall cognitive performance than the group with the lowest cognitive ability.3 Moreover, about a quarter of those in the group with the lowest cognitive ability showed symptoms of dementia, whereas those in the group with the highest cognitive ability did not show any symptoms of dementia.4
As for which foods were healthiest, those with the highest cognitive ability over time ate more whole grains or less processed plant foods, including whole grains and leafy green vegetables, and less processed foods with added sugars and refined grains. Even small dietary differences in childhood appeared to influence later dietary preferences, highlighting the importance of establishing healthy eating habits from a young age.
“This suggests that our diet in childhood may influence our later dietary decisions, and that the cumulative effects of our diet over time are linked to the progression of our overall cognitive abilities,” Cara said.5 In other words, cognitive health is not simply determined by factors of old age, but is also influenced by the dietary choices we make throughout our lives.
This perspective shifts the focus of cognitive health interventions from a later-life to a life-span approach, emphasizing the importance of establishing healthy eating habits from childhood and maintaining them throughout adulthood.
Still, there is hope for those who didn’t eat the healthiest diets in their younger years. “Our findings also provide new evidence that improving dietary patterns through midlife can impact cognitive function and may help to mitigate or reduce cognitive decline later in life,” Cara added.6
How to Easily Eat More High-Fiber Foods and Complex Carbs
Complex carbohydrates have traditionally been considered beneficial for gut health, but simple sugars have been shown to promote aging. The featured study also found that foods such as whole fruits, beans, whole grains, and leafy green vegetables were best for protecting cognitive function as we age.
However, the impact of complex carbohydrates on gut health and overall health is not simple, especially if your digestive system is already compromised. Research shows that complex carbohydrates, including plant cell wall polysaccharides such as cellulose, feed beneficial gut bacteria.7 Especially in the colon. This fiber is fermented by gut microbes, promoting a healthy microbial balance.
This is consistent with studies of childhood diet, which found that eating fruits, vegetables, and whole grains—sources of complex carbohydrates—early in life was associated with better cognitive function later in life.
However, if your gut health is poor, complex carbohydrates can inadvertently feed harmful bacteria. These pathogens thrive when your body is exposed to metabolic disruptors, such as linoleic acid and endocrine disruptors in plastics, which impair mitochondrial energy production. This lack of energy allows oxygen to enter the colon, creating a favorable environment for pathogenic bacteria to grow.
As these harmful bacteria metabolize complex carbohydrates, they multiply and eventually die, releasing endotoxins called lipopolysaccharides. This further impairs cellular energy production, potentially leading to digestive problems and other health issues.
So, when you have a lot of pathogenic bacteria, it becomes difficult to eat healthy foods because when you eat healthy foods, your endotoxins increase rapidly, which makes you feel worse.
To address this, it is recommended to gradually introduce complex carbohydrates into the diet. Start with fresh juices from ripe fruits, then move on to whole fruits such as oranges, tangerines, mangos, grapes, melons, watermelons, and pineapples (in moderation due to their serotonin content). This approach allows the gut to adapt while still providing the beneficial nutrients highlighted in the childhood diet studies.
After you have adapted to whole fruits, you can slowly introduce more complex carbohydrates. Start with cooked starches such as potatoes (boiled to reduce oxalate content) and white rice. Cooking, refrigerating, or reheating these foods before eating them increases the resistant starch content, which does not spike blood sugar.
This gradual approach to eating complex carbohydrates allows for the benefits, including potential long-term cognitive protection, while minimizing the negative impact on damaged gut. This underscores the truth of the adage, “You are what you eat,” and emphasizes the profound and lasting impact of dietary choices on overall health and cognitive function throughout life.
Your grandparents’ diet can also affect your health
Health is not only determined by our lifestyle choices, but also by the eating habits of our ancestors. This complex relationship is explained in the field of genetics, which studies how gene expression can be modified without changing the basic DNA sequence. These modifications can be passed on to future generations.
In this area, nutritional genetics focuses on how the eating habits of one generation can affect the health of their offspring. A prime example of this is the effect that a mother’s diet can have on her fetus during pregnancy. The nutritional choices that a mother makes can leave a genetic imprint on the fetus, potentially affecting not only the immediate health of her child but also the health of subsequent generations.
This understanding highlights the far-reaching consequences of our dietary choices that extend beyond our lifespan, potentially shaping the health trajectories of our children and grandchildren. This underscores the importance of nutrition not only for our individual well-being, but also as a factor influencing the long-term health of our family lineage.
The Dutch Hunger Winter, a severe famine that occurred in the Netherlands from 1944 to 1945 during World War II, provides compelling evidence of the intergenerational effects of diet. The famine was caused by a German blockade and harsh winter climate that disrupted food supplies and transportation.8
During this period, the daily calorie intake of the Dutch population plummeted to 400–800 calories, well below the generally recommended 2,000 calories. People resorted to unconventional food sources such as grass and tulip bulbs to survive. About 4.5 million people suffered from severe famine and 20,000 died.9
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences investigated whether in utero famine exposure was associated with persistent epigenetic changes in the insulin-like growth factor II (IGF2) gene, which is essential for human growth and development.10 The study found that people exposed to famine before birth during the Dutch winter famine had lower DNA methylation levels of the IGF2 gene compared to their unexposed siblings.
These findings support the notion that prenatal and early life environmental conditions, including dietary changes such as famine, can induce lasting epigenetic changes in humans. Additional animal studies support these results, with studies showing that the paternal diet of sheep affected growth and reproduction in the next three generations.11
This body of evidence highlights the potential long-term, multi-generational impacts of major dietary changes, and underscores the importance of nutrition not only for immediate health, but also for health later in life and for the health of future generations.
Improving mitochondrial function protects cognitive function
Regardless of age, it can reduce the risk of chronic diseases, including dementia, and prevent cognitive decline by improving mitochondrial function, according to a study published in Neurology.12 An inflammatory diet has been shown to increase the risk of dementia, a disease caused by mitochondrial dysfunction.13
There are three vicious toxins that disrupt mitochondrial function by affecting intracellular calcium and the overall cellular health of the body. Increased intracellular calcium can increase levels of superoxide and nitric oxide, which combine to form peroxynitrite, a powerful reactive oxygen species that is harmful to health. These three toxins include:
- Excessive LA intake – LA, an omega-6 polyunsaturated fat (PUFA), is found abundantly in seeds, vegetable oils, and ultra-processed foods, and may be the most harmful component of the Western diet. When consumed in excess, it negatively affects metabolic rate and gut microbiota, two of the most important factors affecting health.
- Endocrine Disruptors (EDCs) – Exposure to EDCs from sources such as microplastics causes hyperactivation of estrogen receptors. Microplastics are so prevalent that you may be ingesting a piece the size of a credit card each week.14 Those plastics are loaded with phthalates and bisphenol A (BPA), which activate estrogen receptors. Estrogen increases calcium levels within cells.15 This can lead to the formation of nitrogen oxides.
- Excessive exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) – People are bombarded by electromagnetic waves, such as those from cell phones, every day, and this has hidden consequences for public health. EMFs activate intracellular voltage-gated calcium channel (VGCC) receptors, causing calcium influx, which in turn promotes the production of peroxynitrite.16
Daily exposure to these three toxins disrupts our microbiome, setting the stage for chronic disease. So, in addition to eating right at all stages of life, avoiding excessive LA, as well as EDCs and EMFs, will help protect your brain health throughout your life.
