Keep Fit Program For The Brain

merryprankster writes "New Scientist is running a feature on 11 steps to a better brain. While becoming a nun might be an extreme way to avoid senility, there are lots of other tricks, techniques and habits, as well as changes to your lifestyle, diet and behaviour that can help you flex your grey matter and get the best out of your brain cells." From the article: "First, go to the top of the class by eating breakfast. The brain is best fuelled by a steady supply of glucose, and many studies have shown that skipping breakfast reduces people's performance at school and at work. But it isn't simply a matter of getting some calories down. According to research published in 2003, kids breakfasting on fizzy drinks and sugary snacks performed at the level of an average 70-year-old in tests of memory and attention."

Comments

Re:Breakfast?

[nightskier]

I have been experimenting with the breakfast part For years, I had been skipping breakfast. A month ago, I decided to start eating a daily breakfast high in protein and complex carbs. Subjectively, I feel a lot better. I have more energy throughout the day, I'm less stressed, and my memory has improved. Being a geek, I decided to do some benchmarking. Before starting the diet, I purchase a book of crossword puzzles. I completed half of the puzzles over a period of a few weeks (one a day). I timed how long it took me to finish each puzzle. Two weeks ago I started attempting the puzzles again. My times have improved by more than 20 percent.

Re:Sugary snacks

[srleffler]

Note that, by law, the ingredients are listed by quantity, from most to least. (I'm not sure if it's by weight or by volume.) This means that the filling is primarily corn syrup and sugars. There is less strawberry in that filling than each of the three kinds of sugar listed, and less of each of those than corn syrup. Note that while artificial and natural flavors and red dye #40 are way down the list, it doesn't take much of these to give the red color and the nice strawberry flavor. Altogether, the filling is best characterized as synthetically-flavored sugar syrup. They add a tiny amount of strawberry and apple so that they can claim on the packaging that it contains real fruit, without increasing the cost too much.

If you still have it handy, check out the nutrition information box on the package. Does one serving contain a measurable amount of fiber? I have run into products made with 'whole wheat' that somehow managed not to have even a gram of fiber in them. I'm not sure how they manage that.

Nutrigrain bars are basically vitamin-enriched cookies. They are probably better for you than a regular cookie, or a donut, but they don't really qualify as healthy food either.

Accurate label on your post, there

[ianscot]

And don't miss breakfast. This is why the United States is a nation of fat slobs. Nutritional experts telling everyone they need to eat like an adolescent during his growth spurt. Most people don't need breakfast or lunch either for that matter.

Gee, that's funny, essentially every nutritionist not moaning under a cultish trance over some Atkins variant would say dinner's the one to cut back on, but to get a healthy breakfast above all else. It's a conspiracy of experts, as you say. (Please ignore the obvious fact that Americans have never managed to follow this advice from the nutritionists all that well.)

All that is required is a diet with a reasonable amount of high quality protein.

I understand the appeal of contrarian positions, but you're just an Atkins fanboy. That diet, and all its many corollary marketed materials, exist for nutritionists on the same level that "intelligent design" does for biologists. You've successfully regurgitated your share of the sophisms, so call it a day. Go grill a steak.

Re:psychology

[Andronoid]

true enough for this article. I guess I'm just commenting on a more general trend I see of bad neuroscience and psychology on slashdot and the mainstream media (as well as in the field). These studies aren't neccessarily bad but the way they are discussed often is.

http://www.jsmf.org/about/s/badneuro/archive.htm