Government urged to promote Mediterranean diet to help tackle dementia.

A group of senior GPs and dementia experts have written to the Government urging it to make a public health campaign promoting the Mediterranean diet the focus of its efforts to tackle dementia.

Former RCGP chair Professor Clare Gerada, National Obesity Forum chair Professor David Haslam, cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra, academics researching dementia and Dr Simon Poole, a senior GPC member writing in a personal capacity, are among those to write an open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron and health secretary Jeremy Hunt ahead of the G8 Dementia Summit in London this Wednesday.

In the letter, the group claims that politicians are too focused on potentially ‘dubious’ drug treatments and have failed to get across public health messages that could help address the increasing prevalence of dementia. They argue that the Government should invest in a programme to educate both schoolchildren and the wider adult population on the benefits of a Mediterranean diet to reduce the risk of people developing dementia.

Studies have shown that adhering to a diet rich in fruit and vegetables, unrefined cereals, fish and olive oil can reduce the risk of developing dementia as well as other conditions like cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer, the authors argued.

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When they go further and recommend a much reduced carb diet, they will start getting somewhere, they know carbs are the problem, but having rubbished fat for so long, they can't admit they have been wrong for decades.

Eddie