Cranberries reduce your dementia risk

Add cranberries to your daily breakfast and you’ll help keep your memory sharp as you get older.

The fruit also improves overall brain function and lowers levels of the ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol, a new study has found.

Eating a cup of cranberries is enough to protect you from dementia if you start the healthy habit by the time you’re 50, say researchers from the University of East Anglia.

They were seeing a positive effect within just three months of eating the fruit when they gave freeze-dried cranberry powder—the equivalent of a cup or 100g of fresh cranberries—every day to a group of volunteers aged from 50 to 80.  Thirty of the participants drank the powder while the other 30 were instead given a placebo.

Those given the powder showed ‘significant improvement’ in their recall of everyday events, neural functioning and brain perfusion, the amount of blood reaching the brain.  Their levels of LDL cholesterol also fell.

With dementia expected to affect 152 million people worldwide by 2050, eating a cup of cranberries is a simple and effective way to protect people from neuro-degenerative disease, the researchers say.

Frontiers in Nutrition, 2022; 9: doi: 10.3389/fnut.2022.849902

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