Nordic Prudent Diet

The Nordic Prudent Diet and Alzheimer's

The roots of the prudent diet dates back to New York City’s anti-coronary program in 1957. The diet controls fat and cholesterol by limiting the intake of eggs, whole milk, and whole milk-based dairy products, liver, shellfish, and commercial pastry products. Lean meat is allowed, but fish is preferred and recommended for four to five meals per week. In terms of cognition and lowering Alzheimer’s risk, one subset of the prudent diet appears to stand out. The Nordic prudent diet.1

Cultural norms, food availability, convenience, affordability, and palatability lead to differences in food consumption in different parts of the world. Some of these variables might contribute to the success of one diet in one region, such as the Mediterranean diet in southern Europe, and not in other regions. The main example being the null results obtained from the Mediterranean diet in Australia. The Nordic prudent diet is another example of how the prudent diet in North America may not yield improved cognitive results, but the prudent diet in the Nordic countries may.2

he Nordic prudent diet consists of non-root vegetables, apples/pears/peaches, pasta/rice, poultry, fish, vegetable oil, tea, and water. Items that are scored negatively on the Nordic prudent diet consist of root vegetables, refined grains/cereals, high-fat dairy products, butter/margarine, sugar/sweets/pastries, fruit juice and wine. Root vegetables contain a lot of starch, refined grains and cereals have a high amount of carbohydrates, high-fat dairy products as well as butter and margarine have high amounts of saturated fat and sugar, sweets, pastries and fruit juice all have high amounts of sugar. Wine has pluses and minuses and we discuss wine in detail in an upcoming section within this chapter covering specific foods.3

Studies Investigating The Nordic Prudent Diet and Alzheimer's

In a random sample of 2223 healthy Swedish participants over 60, the Nordic prudent diet scored better than all the diets we’ve been discussing except for the ketogenic diet which was not tested. The study lasted six years and used cognitive scores to compare the effects of the Nordic prudent diet with the Baltic Sea diet, MIND diet, DASH diet and the Mediterranean diet.3

After an average of six years, the investigators tested the cognition of the participants. The test used was called the Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE) which is widely used to measure cognition. The score ranges from 1-30. A score of less than 12 is indicative of severe dementia. A score of 13-20 correlates to someone with dementia and a score of 20-24 to mild dementia. A score of 25 and higher is within the normal range. In the study, the investigators found 133 participants whose MMSE score dropped below 25. When examining the diet of those who score below the normal range, high adherence to the Nordic prudent diet translated to an 80% reduced risk of dementia. The MIND diet had the second best results, followed by the Baltic Sea diet. The DASH diet and the Mediterranean diet performed the worst. It should be noted however, the Mediterranean diet score was altered to allow vegetable oil rather than just olive oil to account for regional dietary patterns in Sweden which may have altered the data. Similar issues with other food items may have affected the results.3