A new study has claimed that Mediterranean diet can assist people prevent the small areas of brain from damage that can trigger problems with thinking and memory.

Mediterranean diet includes a high intake of veggies, whole grains and fish, a low intake of saturated fat and meat and moderate alcohol use.

These dietary essentials keep the part of the brain that controls memory and thinking fit and firing.

Researchers from the Columbia University medical centre in New York assessed the diets of 712 people in New York and segregated them into three groups on grounds of how closely they were following the Mediterranean diet.

Also MRI brain scans of the people an average of six years later were conducted. The result revealed a total of 238 people to have at least one area of brain damage.

Those who were most closely following a Mediterranean-like diet were 36 percent less likely to have areas of brain damage than those who were least following the diet. Those moderately sticking to the diet were reported to be
21 percent less vulnerable to suffer brain damage than the lowest group.

The study author Nikolaos Scarmeas, MD, MSc, of Columbia University Medical Center in New York and a member of the American Academy of Neurology, "A Mediterranean-like diet may be associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease and may lengthen survival in people with Alzheimer's disease".