Monday June 22, 2015 (foodconsumer.org) -- Scientists at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, MA, United States and other organizations conducted a study and found what you eat affect the risk of advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Specifically, prudent diet, a diet intended to stop hypertension called DASH diet, and the alternative Mediterranean Diet (aMED) were associated with reduced risk of AMD while Western diet was linked to increased risk of this eye disease.

The study was based on data from 76,693 female participants in the Nurses' Health Study and 39,519 male participants in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study.

Researchers analyzed the data to determine how the risk of AMD is affected by two cardioprotective dietary patterns, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) and the alternative Mediterranean Diet (aMED), and two dietary patterns determined by factor analysis, prudent and western pattern.

The study found the prudent diet associated with 23% reduced risk of advanced AMD while western dietary pattern was correlated with 36% elevated risk.   DASH and aMED were associated with 17% and 16% reduced risk of AMD, respectively.

No diets were found associated with risk of intermediate AMD though.

A prudent diet is full of plant-based foods while a western diet has high intake of red meat, butter, sugar, and refined grains. (David Liu)

Juan Wu, Debra Schaumberg, Teresa Fung, Srinivas Sastry and Walter Willett, Dietary Patterns and Risk of Age-Related Macular Degeneration After More Than Two Decades of Follow-Up, The FASEB Journal,  vol. 29 no. 1 Supplement 260.6  April 2015