EATING a Mediterranean diet and cooking with olive oil can help to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, scientists say.

Those who eat lots of fruit, vegetables, whole grains, fish and drink a moderate amount of red wine are 68 per cent less likely to suffer Alzheimer’s than those who do not.

The findings add to the growing evidence that Mediterranean food is good for health.

The diet has already been associated with a longer life and can help to stave off cancer, obesity and coronary heart disease, but its effect against Alzheimer’s appears to work independently, scientists at the Columbia University Medical Centre, New York, said.

About 500,000 people in Britain suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, which causes memory loss, mood changes and death.

The Columbia team studied nearly 1,984 adults, checking them for signs of dementia every 18 months and assessing their eating habits. At the start, 194 had Alzheimer’s and by the end 89 more had developed the disease.

The participants, whose average age was 76, were given a score between 0 and 9 on how closely they stuck to a Mediterranean diet, and were divided into three groups according to their score.

Those in the top group, who stuck most closely to a Mediterranean diet, were 68 per cent less likely to get the disease compared with those in the bottom third.

Those in the middle group were 53 per cent less likely to get Alzheimer’s than the bottom third.

Writing in Archives of Neurology, a journal of the American Medical Association, the scientists said that for each additional point scored, the risk of Alzheimer’s decreased by 19 to 24 per cent.

The trends held true even after taking into account the participant’s age, gender, ethnic background, weight and smoking history.

The diet’s effect on individuals with vascular diseases — such as stroke, heart disease and diabetes — suggested that it might work through specific pathways to reduce Alzheimer’s disease.

The Mediterranean diet was first claimed in the 1950s to be behind the long life expectancy of southern Europeans.

In 2004 a team of Dutch researchers found that among the elderly, the diet was linked with a 23 per cent lower risk of death over ten years.

Statistics from the European Union say that Greeks stick most closely to the ideal Mediterranean diet, followed by the Spanish, Italians and French. Britons came fifth, ahead of Danes and Germans.

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