Flourish with Food: An Eat Better Resolution for 2025

An early 2024 Pew Research survey looked at who made New Year’s resolution, why and why not.

Can you count yourself among the 30% of Americans who made a New Year’s resolution last year? The goals of a sizable majority focused on diet, exercise or health.

How about adherence a month out? About 90% reported keeping at least some of them. Easily breaking resolutions is one of the reasons reported for not making a resolution at all.

Recent MIND diet research highlights from the National Institutes of Health inspired a reflection on personal ways to be more inclusive of brain healthy foods. This month’s Flourish with Food feature revisits the MIND eating pattern and goal setting.

As a reminder: The MIND approach centers on 10 “brain healthy” foods: berries, green leafy vegetables, other vegetables, beans, nuts, whole grains, fish, poultry, olive oil and wine. The approach also highlights 5 food groups to limit: red meats, butter and stick margarine, cheese, pastries/sweets, and fried/fast food. Eating frequency for each food group is helpfully specified. For specifics, refer to: https://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/what-to-know-about-mind-diet.

Who doesn’t want to protect their brain health? The challenge: After a self-reflection of which brain healthy foods are regulars in your week, pick one or two MIND foods that come up short.

The KISS principle (“Keep It Short and Simple” OR “Keep It Simple, Stupid”) is a great guide for setting clear and attainable goals. Think specific, simple and actionable.

Examples of KISS-style MIND goals:

• Include a bean and/or whole grain in homemade soups at least half the time.
• Purchase chard or kale weekly.
• Limit red beef to two meals monthly.
• Prepare one spaghetti dinner with whole wheat pasta to test for family acceptable.
• Include humus in a meal or snack once or more weekly.
• Eat salmon weekly.
• Purchase extra salmon for a planned-over second meal.
• Add chopped walnuts when cooking oatmeal.
• Have bagged leafy greens in the fridge for two green salad lunches weekly.
• Choose a nut and dried fruit trail mix for two snacks weekly.