72 Dietary Fat and Measures of Attention and Learning in Middle-Aged Adults

Abstract

Objective:Research examining dietary fat in relation to physical and cognitive health is mixed. Generally, it has been hypothesized that polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) have vascular, anti-inflammatory, and neuroprotective effects1,2,3. Monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) commonly occur with saturated fatty acids (SFA) in certain foods, and some research suggests that consumption is associated with increased vascular risk4; however, there is limited research examining combined MUFAs and SFAs consumption from traditional Western diet foods (e.g., pizza, desserts) compared to animal (e.g., butter, cow milk, salmon) and plant products (e.g., coconut oil, cocoa butter). Furthermore, much of the research examining dietary components/supplementation and cognition is in older adult or at-risk samples, with limited research examining the relationships among middle-aged and cognitively unimpaired adults. We present preliminary data from an ongoing pilot study.Participants and Methods:39 middle-aged (40-65 years, inclusive) cognitively unimpaired individuals were recruited from the community. The Food Frequency Questionnaire (Short-Form; SF-FFQ) was used to calculate diet components and servings during a “typical week.” Attention and working memory were measured using trial one of the California Verbal Learning Test - Third Edition (CVLT-III), Oral Trail Making Test Part B, Number Span (forward and backward), Stroop Color and Color-Word trials. Genetic and other plasma-based data for 25 participants have also been obtained, and analysis is in progress; we plan to analyze these additional components in greater detail once we have achieved our target sample size.Results:Nonparametric correlation analyses revealed no significant relationships between total dietary fat (as measured by the SF-FFQ) and cognitive performance, which included CVLT Trial 1 (r = .28, p = .09), Oral Trail Making Test Part B (r = .02, p = .89), Number Span Forward (r = .18, p = .27) and Number Span Backward (r = -.04, p = .83), Stroop Color trial (r = -.10, p = .56), and Stroop Color-Word trial (r = -.09, p = .58). Notably, however, data is continuing to be collected and these relationships will be examined further with additional data.Conclusions:While total fat consumption was expected to be associated with attention and working memory measures, correlations revealed nonsignificant relationships. Notably, there are important limitations to consider, as other expected relationships based on previous research findings/theoretical relationships (e.g., positive correlation between waist-to-hip ratio and fat consumption) were lacking. A primary limitations of this study included a small sample size of cognitive and physically healthy middle-aged adults. Regardless, these relationships should be explored further with a greater and more diverse sample size.