It turns out that eating an apple a day really does keep the doctor away.

This turns out to be old news, but I am just learning about it now. And I’m excited, because the doctor it can keep away is the sort of doctor who tells you that you have Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s disease affects about one person out of every nine over 65 in this country, which is a terribly frightening number for those of us who are over 65. It is the leading, but far from the only, cause of dementia. A study published in Neurology magazine in 2021 suggests that eating a daily diet of foods high in flavonoids — which are found in almost all plants — can reduce the risk of what the science types call subjective cognitive decline.

Subjective cognitive decline — being forgetful and feeling less sharp than before — is common as you get older, but it is also thought to be an early sign of Alzheimer’s.

Typically, when I see studies such as this, I scoff. I wonder just how effective the foods are at doing what they are credited to do. Are the promised benefits of eating chia seeds really worth having to eat chia seeds?

But the numbers involved in this study are impressive.

People who ate the most flavonoids were nearly 20% more likely to avoid subjective cognitive decline than people who ate the least.

That is not insignificant. And the group that ate the most flavones and flavanones (they’re specific types of flavonoids) were 38% and 36% respectively more likely to avoid it than those who ate the least.

OK, it’s definition time.

Flavonoids are an umbrella group of compounds found in essentially all plants. Flavones are a type of flavonoid that are found in grapefruit, oranges and other citrus fruits, the hulls of grains such as millet, sorghum, buckwheat and rice, and random vegetables such as green peppers, artichoke and celeriac.

They are especially concentrated in dried parsley, but how much dried parsley can a fellow eat?

Flavanones are a type of flavonoid that are also common in citrus fruit, especially grapefruit, lemons, limes and oranges. They are especially concentrated in dried oregano, but again, how much dried oregano can a fellow eat?

Tea and wine are also rich in flavonoids, along with strawberries, apples (“an apple a day”), pears, celery and bananas. According to the study, which was more comprehensive and covered a longer period than similar studies that came before it, all of these foods were helpful in reducing the incidence of subjective cognitive decline.

The study’s authors suggest eating high-flavonoid foods daily, but they don’t specify how much of what to eat.

So be smart. Eat fruit. Eat grains. Eat sorghum if you can find it (it’s actually the fifth most eaten grain in the world, almost exclusively in Africa and Asia). Eat celeriac (delicious, but it has to be cooked for a while). Eat gobs of dried parsley and oregano.

Basically, eat plants. And if you like meat, eat meat, too.

But chia seeds? I’ll pass. We all have to go sometime.

©2026 STLtoday.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.