Overview
- A JAMA Network Open study of 2,157 older adults found that APOE4 carriers, a gene variant tied to higher Alzheimer’s risk, who ate the most meat had about a 55% lower dementia incidence.
- Among people without APOE4, higher meat intake did not track with better cognition or lower dementia risk.
- Diets with a higher share of processed meat were linked to a small increase in dementia risk across all genotypes, with an estimated hazard ratio near 1.14.
- The highest-intake group ate a median near 870 grams of meat per week, standardized to 2,000 calories a day, compared with about 250 grams in the lowest group.
- Researchers stress the data are self-reported and observational in a mostly Northern European cohort and call for randomized trials to test genotype-based nutrition.