Diet and Dementia

The Food Programme

BBC

Food, Arts

4.4 • 977 Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2016

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For the 850 thousand families in the UK living with dementia, the simple daily practise of eating a meal can escalate into a dreaded challenge. Spurred on by a listener's personal experience, Sheila Dillon meets people living with dementia to ask how their relationship with food has changed.

American food writer Paula Wolfert has written award winning books on the food of the Mediterranean. In 2012, she was diagnosed with a form of dementia and after careful research she transformed her daily diet. As Paula prepares to release what will be her final book, Sheila speaks to her about what food means now. Sheila also meets James Ashwell, a young entrepreneur whose online business venture was inspired by caring for his mother who loved to cook.

Sheila hears from Professor Margaret Rayman, who heads the nutritional medicine course at the University of Surrey. Her book 'Healthy Eating to Reduce the Risk of Dementia' draws on hundreds of academic papers into nutrition and the brain. And in an area which still requires so much research, Sheila speaks to an American academic embarking on what could be the 'gold standard' study into how what we eat affects the development of dementia.

Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced by Clare Salisbury

Photo credit: Alison van Diggelen.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Program.
0:05.0	Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture, politics to pleasure.
0:10.0	We hope you enjoy it.
0:12.0	Hello. We hope you enjoy it. Hello, is that Angie?
0:16.0	It is.
0:17.0	Hello, it's Sheila Dylan from the food program.
0:20.0	I'm talking to Angie Roberts, a listener who contacted the food program earlier this year.
0:27.0	I think it was you that said at the end of one of your programs, if anyone has got any ideas, and my first thought with my mom dementia and her
0:36.4	eating habits changing I've even got a book on dementia that I don't think
0:40.1	there's anything on eating in the whole book I think it's been ignored but I don't think it's an issue that really affects people
0:46.4	unless you're actually working with a relative or you're a carer.
0:50.5	I don't think it's something that people are aware of.
0:53.0	Unless you're right up against it, as Angie is, cooking for her mother most of the week.
0:58.0	Clara, Angie's mom, isn't alone.
1:01.0	She's one of about 850,000 people with dementia in the UK. Worldwide,
1:07.4	the number is more frightening. 47.5 million sufferers, says the World Health Organization, predicted if we don't get some
1:15.7	answers to rise to nearly 76 million by 2030.
1:21.0	So when you initially contacted us, what were the questions that you hoped we would be able to answer?
1:27.0	What's the best approach? In other words, should I be making mom eat or should I just respect the fact that she doesn't want to eat the food?
1:34.0	And see how much of my experience with my mom is something that's shared by other people.
1:39.0	Angie's questions, what do we know, what can I do, are part of the reason we're making this program.
1:45.0	People like me went through the situation of just thinking that Christmas dinner had to take four hours
	...

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