• Posted January 8, 2025

Can the Mediterranean Diet Boost Your Memory?

The Mediterranean diet is renown for its ability to improve heart health and help folks lose weight.

Now a new rat study says this eating pattern also might provide folks a boost in brain power.

Lab rats fed a Mediterranean diet developed changes in gut bacteria that researchers linked to better memory and improved cognitive performance, according to results published recently in the journal Gut Microbes Reports.

“Our findings suggest that dietary choices can influence cognitive performance by reshaping the gut microbiome,” lead researcher Rebecca Solch-Ottaiano, a neurology research instructor at Tulane University’s Clinical Neuroscience Research Center, said in a news release from the college.

For the study, researchers fed rats a diet rich in olive oil, fish and fiber over 14 weeks. The young rats were approximately equivalent in age to 18-year-old humans.

The rats showed increases in four beneficial types of gut bacteria, compared to another group of rats eating a Western-style diet high in saturated fats.

These changes in gut bacteria were linked to improved performance on maze challenges designed to test the rats’ memory and learning abilities, researchers said.

The Mediterranean diet group also showed better cognitive flexibility, or the ability to adapt to new information, results show. They also had better short-term “working” memory.

These results suggest that teenagers and young adults whose brains and bodies are still maturing could be positively influenced by following a Mediterranean diet.

“Our findings suggest that the Mediterranean diet or its biological effects could be harnessed to improve scholastic performance in adolescents, or work performance in young adults,” senior researcher Dr. Demetrius Maraganore, chair of neurosciences at Tulane, said in a news release.

“While these findings are based on animal models, they echo human studies linking the Mediterranean diet to improved memory and reduced dementia risk,” Maraganore added.

Researchers said that people who want to follow a Mediterranean diet should:

• Use olive oil as their primary fat source.

• Eat lots of vegetables, fruits and whole grains.

• Choose fish and lean proteins over fatty or processed meats.

• Get lots of fiber from various plant sources.

More information

Columbia University has more on food and brain health.

SOURCE: Tulane University, news release, Jan. 3, 2025