In other words, may some foods be specif­i­cally good for brain function?

For a great in-depth review of the effects of food on the brain you can check out Fer­nando Gomez-Pinilla’s recent arti­cle in Nature Reviews Neu­ro­science (ref­er­ence below). Here is an overview of the state off the research.

Sev­eral com­po­nents of diet seem to have a pos­i­tive effect on brain function.

Omega-3 fatty acids

These acids are nor­mal con­stituents of cell mem­branes and are essen­tial for nor­mal brain func­tion. Omega-3 fatty acids can be found in fish (salmon), kiwi, and wal­nuts. Docosa­hexaenoic acid, or DHA, is the most abun­dant omega-3 fatty acid in cell mem­branes in the brain. The human body pro­duces DHA but not enough. So we are depen­dent on the DHA that we get from what we eat.

A ran­dom­ized double-blind con­trolled trial (which means seri­ously con­ducted sci­en­tific study) is cur­rently look­ing at the effect of tak­ing omega-3 fatty acids on children’s per­for­mance at school in Eng­land. Pre­lim­i­nary results (Port­wood, 2006) sug­gest that Read the rest of this entry »