Kitchen aid?
A new study out of Japan found that older adults who practice a key mealtime habit might lower their risk of dementia by anywhere from 30% to almost 70%.
In fact, if they’re beginners with low skills, the benefit is even greater.
Published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, the findings show that stimulating activities — like cooking a meal at home — may help to keep the brain knife-sharp.
This is consistent with other studies that demonstrate how productive activities — cooking, gardening, volunteering, crafting, etc — can slow cognitive decline in older adults.
It also comes on the heels of a 2020 report indicating that close to 40% of the world’s dementia cases could be “prevented or delayed” by intervening in 12 key lifestyle risk factors, including poor diet and lack of physical activity.
Fire up the burners.
The researchers for this study drew upon data from thousands of participants 65 and older, whose cognitive health had been tracked from 2016 to 2022 for the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study.
It was a relatively diverse group: one-half were men, one-fifth were over the age of 80, one-third had less than nine years of education and 40% were low-income.
Participants answered questions about the frequency of their home cooking, ranging from “never” to “more than five times a week,” and shared the extent of their cooking expertise.
They were asked about their mastery of seven common kitchen skills, like their ability to peel fruit and vegetables and make stews.
Overall, more than one-quarter of participants reported cooking fewer than five times a week.
To determine the rate of dementia incidence, the researchers linked data from participants in the Gerontological Evaluation Study cohort to data from Japan’s public long-term care insurance registry that had been collected during the same six-year period.
According to that second set of data, 1,195 people developed dementia between 2016 and 2022.
The analysis showed that while cooking at home had an overall positive impact on participants’ brain health, novice cooks stood to benefit most from attempting a home-cooked meal, with a 67% lower risk of dementia.
A possible explanation is that learning new skills offers an extra boost of cognitive stimulation.
There are also obvious dietary benefits to home cooking, which generally involves more fruits and vegetables and fewer ultraprocessed foods. On the flip side, restaurant food is often high in saturated fat, sugar, sodium and calories, which may contribute to a range of health problems.
Cooking at home also requires some mobility.
“Given that cooking is a household chore involving grocery shopping and standing, cooking may have reduced the risk of dementia through physical activity,” the researchers wrote.
Still, future studies are needed to better understand a possible connection between cooking frequency and dementia, the researchers caveat.
In the meantime, there’s no harm in adding a few more cooks to the kitchen, especially as we age.
