Researchers at Harvard University have determined how much olive oil to consume each day to protect your mental health.
We’ve known this for years. The Mediterranean diet, which consists of basing one’s diet on the consumption of fresh, seasonal products (fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, etc.) and vegetable oil (olive, almond, coconut, etc.) tends to preserve life expectancy. And the star of this type of diet, olive oil, has long been one of the foods with proven health benefits. New observations even today indicate that olive oil could act on increasing “healthy” life expectancy this time.
Recent analyzes have shown that olive oil has a protective effect against cardiovascular events and delays the onset of mental illness. Among these, a survey carried out in the United States is a first. Carried out by researchers at Harvard University on nearly 92,000 people over nearly 28 years, it provided valuable observations on the relationship between a diet based on olive oil and the associated risks of death. to dementia, the number of which continues to increase every year.
Through a diet questionnaire, these thousands of men and women were asked to evaluate their eating habits, particularly on the types of oils and fats used. This notably made it possible to obtain clear results: from a certain quantity of olive oil consumed each day, the risk of death linked to dementia is significantly reduced.
Harvard researchers have in fact determined that “consumption of at least 7 grams of olive oil each day (i.e. half a spoon) would be enough to reduce the risk of death linked to dementia by 28% compared to the fact of consuming very little or not at all. The effects of olive oil consumption on mortality linked to dementia would be even more visible in women, who were represented at a rate of 65% during the ‘investigation.
The questionnaire submitted did not take into account the quality of the oils consumed, nor the other dietary habits of the respondents. But its contribution remains considerable. No study has reached such a scale until now. Even less so in the United States where the Mediterranean diet is only poorly developed and olive oil consumption is very low, according to the researchers themselves.
These indicate that in addition to the fairly robust number of participants in their sample, 5,000 died from dementia-related illnesses during the more than 20 years of study. Enough to further strengthen their conclusions.