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According to new research, the types of foods we eat have a direct impact on how well our brain ages. A study at Iowa State University, found data to indicate that moderate cheese eaters showed fewer age-related problems in their neural pathways, and that those who drank red wine over the span of the experiment, actually improved their cognitive abilities.
Now before we all start dancing and whooping at the thought of binging over Christmas using these findings as our excuse, the team at Iowa say it’s too early to tell whether this is because people who consumed red wine and cheese were more affluent or had healthier lifestyles to begin with, or whether compounds within the products are influencing our brain functions.
That being said, the study was considered to be large scale, including data from 1787 participants between the ages of 46 to 77, all of whom were volunteers in the UK. The subjects were part of the UK Biobank, a huge biomedical database of genetic and health information from half a million people.
Those who participated, also completed intelligence tests at the start of the study and twice more after set periods of time, over a number of years. Lead scientists, Auriel Willette and Brandon Klinedinst, claimed that these tests assessed an individual’s ability to think on the spot.