LAUSR

It is well established that poor diet quality is associated with an increased risk for dementia.1 We typically measure diet quality regarding the amount of specific nutrients in the diet (e.g., omega-3 fatty acids, added sugar, etc.) or dietary patterns (e.g., the Mediterranean or MIND diet, which recommend high fruit and vegetable consumption, whole grains, etc). Recently, there has been a shift in field of nutrition, with many researchers focused on another component of the diet: the level of “processing” in the foods we eat. However, categorizing foods into unprocessed/minimally processed, processed, and ultraprocessed may be more challenging than the categorization methods of nutrition research that focus on specific nutrients or dietary patterns.