Regularly incorporating brain-healthy foods into your diet can improve your mental functioning. Thanks to their omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, B vitamins, and more, these foods can also protect your heart.
A health publication by Harvard lists five types of brain-boosting foods:
Green leafy vegetables: We’ll get to these soon in this post!
Fatty fish: These include salmon, canned light tuna, cod, and pollack, which contain plenty of healthy unsaturated fats. These unsaturated fats can help lower proteins that can cause problems in people with Alzheimer’s disease.
Berries: Eating strawberries and blueberries weekly can help slow down memory decline, with research showing how the flavonoids they contain can help to improve a person’s memory.
Tea and coffee: The caffeine in these beverages may help solidify new memories. A study showed that people who consume more caffeine can score more highly on mental functioning tests.
Walnuts: These nuts are high in a certain type of omega-3 fatty acid that can protect arteries—which is helpful to the brain—and also lower blood pressure, which is helpful to the heart. Higher walnut consumption has also been connected to higher scores on cognitive tests.
Green Leafy Vegetables and Brain Health
Health-related studies often focus on significant health challenges, which makes sense. After all, it can be logical to prioritize resources in studies by focusing on serious issues. Studies often focus on brain health and what can be done to slow down cognitive decline.
In 2018, a study published in Neurology and on the National Institute on Aging (NIA) website noted that eating one serving of greens daily has been linked with slowing down that type of decline.
Specific brain-healthy foods mentioned include spinach, kale, collards, and lettuce. The researchers expect that future studies will also find evidence that eating daily servings of green leafy vegetables plays a role in maintaining brain health.
These results echo those announced at the 2017 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference: that eating green leafy vegetables, berries, whole grains, fish, and beans could reduce “future cognitive impairment by up to 35 percent.”
AARP also reports on a study by Rush University that specifically looks at leafy greens, calling them “one of the most nutritious of any foods” and saying that they are a “key component of preventing mental decline.”
The Alzheimer’s Association’s chief science officer, Maria Carrillo, told AARP that “even little changes can have a significant impact” when talking about regular consumption of leafy greens.
Our Greens Recipes
This Chef’s Garden Salad is a delicious, easy-to-prepare way to enjoy farm-fresh greens. Our Lettuce Wraps recipe is also super simple and very versatile. Get creative! Here’s another salad recipe, this one also incorporating delicious and nutritious root vegetables.
Get Your Green Leafy Vegetables
At Farmer Jones Farm at The Chef’s Garden, we make it easy to enjoy the best of the farm’s fresh, leafy greens. You just need to order our Leafy Greens Box!
This box could include lettuce, spinach, and mixed greens. Using our delicious and nutritious greens, you can create a salad that’s appreciated every bit as much as the entrée, thanks to our incredible assortment of flavors and textures. Our products are regeneratively farmed, harvested fresh, and shipped directly to you. This box contains vegetables for two for approximately one week.