Table Talk

What’s the link between the food we eat and brain function? We’ve spoken on the Food Matters Live Podcast recently about nutrition and healthy ageing, but the link with cognitive function warrants an episode all of its own. There’s a lot of current research into whether diet can slow down cognitive ageing and even reduce your risk of dementia. The notion of ‘brain food’ is nothing new, but how much of what we’re told stands up to scrutiny?   What does the research tell us?  And what should we be eating to keep our brains healthy? The brain makes up just two per cent of our bodyweight, but uses 20 per cent of our oxygen intake, 20 per cent of the glucose we consume, and needs more than 1,000 litres of blood every day. It would seem to follow that the nutrients we consume through the food we eat will have a big impact on our brain function. But we're interested in looking at the facts, the science, and the research that either supports or contradicts that assumption. In recent years it’s