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Mashed Potatoes Directly Enhance Memory
Gryphon writes "According to research completed at the University of Toronto, "mashed potatoes and barley may indeed be food for thought". The effect is most noticeable for the elderly and those with bad memories, but in all subjects, memory was noticeably enhanced just 15 minutes after ingestion, with effects lasting for about an hour. Being a student with exams to write, I thought this was cool -- bring on the beer and fries? :) " If potato chips counted I'd be capable of remembering the stone age. As it stands, I can't remember most of college.
If you are eating potatoes now, I suggest reading the article before you indulge too much.
They had people fast for an evening, then fed them food, then realized that their memory got better. Is this news? Maybe the reason they did better is BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T SO HUNGRY!!!
The experiment shows that the people who drank the glucose suppliment drink showed the least improvement. And those who ate mashed potatoes and barley had the most improvement. Maybe that is because THE PEOPLE WHO MERELY HAD A DRINK WERE STILL HUNGRY!!!
The experiment is silly. The test didn't feed people any non-glucose foods, so the control section was invalid. The researches believed the glucose in the potatoes was the cause. Thus they predicted that the glucose drink would help the most. It didn't. The ones who ate barley and potatoes did the best. So it is obviously not the glucose. More likely, it was that they needed solid food.
Even with memory prices as high as they are, I can improve the performance of my systems with simple garden vegetables and tubers?
While potatoes are bulky and may not be a good option for my laptop (which doesn't have to do much heavy number-crunching anyhow), there is certainly some space in my main box that could be devoted to mashed potatoes.
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You laugh, but that was seriously my first thought when I read the headline. I think I've been hacking for too long.
First off, I concur that the claim that potatos and barley help boost memory is misleading. This claim, as supported by the article, is true. However, it may be a subset of a larger category of statements: that any nutritious food will help your short term memory for events that occur after eating. This was briefly mentioned in the article (toward the end), but was not brought to light very much.
In general, this exposes the need to pay close attention to journalistic style, which is rather lacking in this article. The author should have mentioned the test, the results, and the conclusions as presented by the scientists. It should not have started with part of the conclusions (the sensationalist part of course), then portions of the test, and then the rest of the conclusion in small print.
Nevertheless, just so people understand, the experiment, as presented, was indeed well-crafted and tested the hypothesis that glucose would improve memory function very well. Given the results, the hypothesis was wrong and the experiment suggests another hypothesis that may be tested in another study. To critisize an experiment for having disproven a hypothesis is useless. The act of having shown that glucose, amoung these 20 people, has little or no affect on memory, is quite useful. It is a mark of a good researcher to note the possible expansion of this experiment.
It is also the mark of poor journalism for sensationalizing the story to the point that it got posted here and evoked a response from me.
-B
BTW, nice humor in other posts!