Adherence to the MIND diet and cognitive performance in the ELSA‐Brasil study

Abstract Background Adherence to healthy dietary patterns such as the MIND diet has been associated with better cognition, but little is known about this relationship in studies from low‐ to middle‐income countries. This study aims to investigate the association between adherence to the MIND diet and cognitive performance in the ELSA‐Brasil study baseline. Method Adherence to the MIND diet score was assessed using a food frequency questionnaire and cognitive performance was evaluated using three cognitive domains: memory domain (immediate word list recall, late word list recall, word list recognition), fluency domain (semantic and phonemic verbal fluency) and executive domain (Trail Making test version B). We used z scores for the three domains and created a standardized global composite score. We used linear regression to investigate the association between MIND diet adherence and cognitive performance adjusted for sociodemographics and clinical variables. We also investigated interactions between adherence to the MIND diet and age, race, and education. Result MIND diet adherence was associated with better cognitive performance in all three domains and with global cognition in unadjusted analysis. However, adherence to the MIND diet was related to a worse performance in the executive domain in a full adjusted model (Table 1). Adherence showed significant interaction with age, race and education, suggesting better cognitive performance with higher adherence in older people (Figure 1), white participants (Figure 2) and those in higher levels of education (Figure 3), but a lower cognitive performance with higher adherence in those in lower levels of education (Figure 3). Conclusion MIND diet adherence was associated with worse performance in an executive function test. Older, white and high‐educated participants had better performance with higher adherence scores.