U.S. News & World Report has released its sixth annual "Best Diets" list and a diet created by, studied and reported on by Rush University Medical Center researchers has been highly ranked in numerous categories.
Rush's dietary program — called the MIND diet — was developed by nutritional epidemiologist Martha Claire Morris, ScD, and several colleagues. It is a mix of the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet, short for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, and stands for Mediterranean-DASH Diet Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay.
The MIND diet has 15 dietary components, including 10 "brain-healthy food groups" and five unhealthy groups — red meat, butter and stick margarine, cheese, pastries and sweets, and fried or fast food. Recent studies have found the MIND diet helped lower the risk of Alzheimer's disease in participants between 35 and 53 percent.
Among the 38 diets evaluated, here is how the MIND diet was ranked by U.S. News:
- Easiest diets to follow: No. 1 (tie)
- Best diets overall: No. 2 (tie)
- Best diets for healthy eating: No. 3 (tie)
- Best diets for diabetes: No. 4 (tie)
- Best heart-healthy diets: No. 4
- Best weight-loss diets: No. 16 (tie)
- Best fast weight-loss diets: No. 21 (tie)
To learn more about the MIND diet, click here. To see the full U.S. News Best Diet Rankings, click here.
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