There is now a wealth of evidence showing that adoption of a healthy diet can lower the risk of various age-related diseases. However, there is a need for more research to identify which nutrients, foods and dietary patterns are most effective in this regard. Similarly, there is a need to understand whether associations observed between diet and age-related disease risk are causal or due to confounding/reverse causality.
Dementia is the leading cause of death in the UK, and a major source of morbidity and mortality. There is therefore a particular need to identify which dietary approaches are associated with lower dementia risk/better brain health.
This project will address the following research questions:
1. Which foods, nutrients and dietary patterns are associated with lower age-related disease risk?
2. What are the potential mechanisms through which diet influences age-related disease risk?
3. Is diet causally associated with lower age-related disease risk (as interrogated via instrumental variable approaches)?
4. Are the associations between diet and age-related disease risk different between population sub-groups?
5. How does following UK-specific healthy eating recommendations, as outlined in the Eatwell Guide, compare with existing dietary approaches such as the Mediterranean diet for lowering age-related disease risk/improving health?
6. Can UK-specific healthy eating recommendations be optimised to maximise effects on health and age-related disease risk?
To answer these questions, we will use dietary, lifestyle, demographic, phenotypic, genotypic, disease status, biomarker and imaging data from the UK Biobank. Our initial focus will be on brain health and dementia risk. However, we will expand our research to cover other ageing/health outcomes as the knowledge base progresses. This research has the potential to inform dietary guidelines for optimising brain (and whole-body) health and lowering age-related disease risk.