Eat your greens, stay mentally sharp

Eating green leafy vegetables will help keep you mentally sharp by the time you reach your late 70s.

The vegetables seem to be the most important element of the Mediterranean diet when it comes to maintaining mental health, but reducing the amount of red meat in the diet can also help, say researchers.

A research team from the University of Edinburgh tested the thinking skills of more than 500 people who were 79 years of age, and assessed their ability to solve problems, their memory and word association, and then analysed what they had been eating in the previous 12 months.

Those who closely followed the Mediterranean diet recorded high cognitive function scores, and those who ate green leafy vegetables, and cut down on the amount of red meat, had the highest scores of all.

(Source: Experimental Gerontology, 2020; 111117; doi: 10.1016/j.exger.2020.111117)

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