Back in 1990 I co-wrote The Eskimo Diet, which introduced the public to the Omega-3s and their potential to reduce the risk of heart attack.  That message was controversial but a few years later the governments in the UK, US and Australia arrived at the same conclusions and omega-3s were officially encouraged for exactly this purpose. 

In 2007 I published a new book, The Brain Food Diet, in which I examined the evidence for Omega-3s in helping to reduce the risk of dementia and/ or mental decline with ageing.  I concluded that the evidence for this was actually about as strong as that for the anti-heart attack role back in 1990.

This week an important new study, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association arrived at a similar conclusion (JAMA Neurol 2016; 73(10); 1183-4.  In the intervening years since 2007 interest in the omega-3s and their brain protective roles had waned, in part through the negative findings of a major study into their potential role in treatment of early Alzheimer’s disease.  But in fact I had concluded in Brain Food Diet that omega-3s were unlikely to help in treatment of the disease.  The new study confirms that their main potential usefulness lies in prevention, not treatment. 

This new study needs to be confirmed by a prospective double blind trial aimed at prevention, especially in older people.