Much has been written about ‘The Western Diet’, devised by our American friends and eagerly embraced in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. We all know that eating McDonalds is bad for us, but it’s not just obesity and diabetes risk; it’s what it does to our precious brains. The good news is: any bad foods we replace with good ones make a difference.
Main Points:
- The Western Diet is a nutrition-free wasteland farmed by 60% of people in ‘The West’;
- It damages the brain directly, and indirectly via 3 common Western diseases;
- Replacing some foods on the Western diet makes double the impact;
- You don’t have to eat kale and mung beans to nourish your brain.
What Is The Western Diet?
The Western Diet is a way of eating marked by processed and sugary foods, and an almost complete lack of fibre, vitamins and minerals. In other words, a pretty unbalanced, un-nutritious regime, the opposite of what healthy gut needs, as we saw in this blog post about the gut-brain axis and what they both need. Spoiler alert: fibre is key.
It’s not just McDonalds. Here is the list of the most harmful foods for our brains; most are part of the Western Diet.
- Ultra-Processed Foods (potato chips, biscuits, ice cream, cake mix);
- Foods high in sugar or artificially sweetened (drinks, cakes, sweets);
- Refined carbohydrates (white bread and white rice etc.);
- Fried foods/fast foods (chips, chicken, fish nuggets);
- Margarine and industrial seed oils (cottonseed, palm, corn and soybean);
- Processed meats (sausages, spam) and excess red meat (slabs of steak);
How Does It Affect The Brain?
We all know that eating too much processed or sugary food leads to obesity; you only have to watch ‘That Sugar Film’ by Australian, Damon Gameau. If you do watch it, you’ll also see that he became very ill – after just 60 days on the diet.
So, how does it work?
A detailed study called Western Diet As A Trigger For Dementia showed how this way of eating triggers three conditions whose prevalence in Western countries is off the charts: metabolic syndrome (a precursor to diabetes), obesity and leaky gut syndrome. The paper showed that these three conditions combine to weaken the blood-brain barrier, enabling harmful compounds to enter the brain and cause damage. This diagram from the original study shows how this works.
How The Western Diet Triggers Dementia
This was the first time I had seen the science laid out with such clarity.
In short, the Western Diet causes three common 21st century Western diseases that combine to enfeeble our brains. Other studies show that a high-sugar diet affects the brain directly, which is why some sources call Alzheimer’s Diseases ‘Type 3 Diabetes’ (see more below).
The gut-brain axis is key to all of this. If you’d like to dig deeper, this post may be helpful.
So Why Is It So Bad?
The first answer is in the word ‘processed’.
Everything from wheat to soybeans to sugar has been processed – starting with removal of the cellulose casing (husk or skin), the bit containing insoluble fibre. Whatever happens next – myriad industrial processes that cook, extract, refine, deodorise and more – the soluble fibre vanishes, along with most of the nutrients.
To read more about the miracle of fibre and why we need more not less, you may like to read this blog post.
The second answer is sugar.
It’s added to sweets, cakes, soft drink and bread, and hidden in health drinks, shakes and bars – you name it – and they’re all processed too. This makes these foods a quadruple whammy: high sugar, high processing, no fibre, no nutrients. Apart from leading to obesity and metabolic syndrome (two of the three diseases that damage the brain), excess sugar affects the brain directly. That’s why some people call dementia ‘Type 3 Diabetes’ because the mechanism is the same as for Type 2.
In fact, excess sugar in the diet means excess sugar in the blood and brain, leading directly to ‘diabetes of the brain’ and indirectly to brain damage via obesity, metabolic and leaky gut syndrome.
The third answer is additives.
Apart from chemicals for processing, many more are added to re-create flavour, colour, structure, aroma and mouth-feel to make the final concoction attractive enough to eat. The long list of chemical names on the label may show this – or may not, in the case of Kellog’s Corn Flakes, the staple breakfast of the 1970s.
The first pic below is what Kellog’s says is in Corn Flakes (12 ingredients, 7 of them vitamins and minerals). The second is what independent analysts say (45 ingredients, most of them chemicals or processed intermediates).
Back in the 1970s, such information wasn’t available, so I shudder to think was in them when we and our kids ate them. At least we didn’t let them eat Coco Pops or Sugar Frosties.
What Kellog’s Says Is In Corn Flakes
What Others Say Is In Corn Flakes
What About ‘Added Fibre’?
We saw earlier how fibre is lacking in the Western Diet; how it’s one of the first things removed when a grain, fruit or vegetable goes into the processing machine. Elsewhere, we show how fibre is the one thing our microbiome most needs to function properly. a seed
That why fibre is often added back into processed food, to make the nutrition table on the pack look better, to gain a ‘healthy tick’ or both – but researchers say, we should ne fooled. These ‘chemically modified fibres’ are refined, isolated forms that lack the diversity and complexity of naturally-occurring fibre so they don’t satisfy our guts bugs; some may even be harmful.
In short, natural, whole, real food is best for fibre – and all nutrients.
All up, the processed sugary Western Diet is a fibre-free, nutrient-free wasteland that many people farm in the hope of feeding their bodies.
In reality, they’re starving their gut bugs and starving their brains, yet they may look anything but malnourished. Eating the Western Diet, they’re more likely to be obese on the outside but nutritionally starved on the inside.
What Should You Give Up?
A recent UK study had an intriguing result: not much to make a big impact.
It tracked 72,083 people over 10 years to see the impact of replacing some ultra-processed foods (UPF) with minimally processed ones. It found the benefit was twice the volume. To quote the authors: ‘…replacing 10% of UPF weight in their diets with an equivalent proportion of unprocessed or minimally processed foods was estimated to lower dementia risk by 19%.’ And that’s just UPF.
So, it looks like replacing some elements of the Western Diet could have more impact on the brain that the effort to do it. If you cut out all ultra-processed and sugary foods, just imagine the difference it could make.
…replacing 10% of UPF weight in their diets with an equivalent proportion of unprocessed or minimally processed foods was estimated to lower dementia risk by 19%.’
What If You Don’t Want To Diet?
Who does? By association, the word ‘diet’ usually conjures up memories of counting calories, craving and hunger and eating tasteless, unsatisfying food – but it doesn’t have to be that way.
In fact, the foods that are most satisfying (that make us feel full sooner) are the ones high in that elusive fibre and in protein and fat – and that opens up a cornucopia of foods that will feed your brain and banish any idea of dieting.
Consider this list of brain superfoods and what you could make them into:
- Fatty fish (salmon, trout, sardines);
- Blueberries, bananas, oranges, avocadoes;
- Broccoli, mushrooms, spinach, bok choy and chickpeas;
- Milk, eggs, plain yogurt;
- Fresh nuts (not roasted or salted) and seeds (pumpkin seeds, flax seeds)
- Green tea, turmeric, whole grains,
and a few surprises:
- Coffee;
- Dark chocolate;
- Red wine.
The key is to eat mostly whole foods and to cook them from scratch at home.
Interestingly, cooking at home was recently found to have a major impact on dementia, especially for people who normally don’t cook. Considering you can also have a glass of red wine with your home-cooked meal, what is not to like?
Summing Up
Eating the Western Diet, especially habitually for years, is one of the most harmful actions you could take for your brain. Conversely, even swapping out some of it could make a positive impact. If we were to thinks of food as fuel for our brains – not just something to quell our hunger pangs – we could make a measurable, positive impact on what we boomers need most: our precious brains.
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If you’re curious about the science of protecting the brain through food – and like the idea of making superfoods into satisfying meals that will make your guests’ mouths water – you may like to see what’s inside Anti-Dementia Food.
ANTI-DEMENTIA FOOD
How you can feed your brain with real food
