The Thinking Meat Project

Feed your brain well

A neurophysiologist at UCLA has done a meta-analysis of more than 160 studies of how food affects the brain. The results were recently published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience and are summarized in a press release on EurekAlert. There’s quite a lot in the EurekAlert story about omega-3 fatty acids (a so-called “good fat” found in salmon, flax seed, walnuts, and other foods), and also some information about transfats (distinctly bad, for the brain as well as your cardiovascular system), folic acid (good), and curcumin (an ingredient in the curry spice turmeric; also good and perhaps responsible for the low rate of Alzheimer’s in India). Also, it turns out that excessive caloric intake can be bad for your brain, and, interestingly, perhaps for the brains of your descendants as well.