You might not yet have noticed, but your nutrition can have both long-term and short-term effects on your brain. “Take protein as an example,” explains Aarts. “In the short term, protein contributes to the creation of neurotransmitters: substances that help the brain to be able to function. And in the long term, eating omega-3 fatty acids from fish is important. Omega-3 doesn’t only contribute to the brain development of babies, but also reduces the chance of developing depression and dementia in later life. So, consciously paying attention to your diet can also have benefits for your brain.”
Motorway maintenance
Aarts therefore emphasises the importance of nutrition, especially for the brain. “Our brains form just two percent of our body weight, but use up twenty percent of our energy. Nutrition is necessary to provide and maintain this required energy. Therefore, the brain contains thousands of miles of blood vessels. These form a sort of motorway for your brain, which must be well maintained. Nutrition also plays an important role in this.”
Aarts contends that because of all these blood vessels, the best diet for your brain is not much different from the best diet for your heart. “Because what is good for your heart is also good for your brain,” she clarifies. “It is best to have a diet that is focused on consuming fibre, vitamins and minerals and healthy fats. This automatically leads you to the so-called mediterranean diet, which comprises a lot of fruit and vegetables, pulses, nuts, wholegrains and preferably fish and healthy oils instead of hard, saturated fats. Here, the focus lies mainly on plant-based food and thus not on red meat and dairy, but also no cake, pastries or fried snacks.”
Consequences for mental wellbeing
A healthy diet is definitely recommended, according to Aarts – also with an eye to mental wellbeing. “What many people don’t know is that built-up body fat can get stuck between the organs. This can become inflamed, causing inflammation in the whole body, including in the brain. This can then potentially lead to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and even depression. Although this chronic inflammation by no means happens to everyone, it does indicate that your diet can also influence your mental state.”
Aarts admits that changing your diet is easier said than done. What makes it difficult is that our brain unfortunately often doesn’t crave the food that is good for it. Why is that? “To find out, we have to look back at evolution,” explains Aarts. “The majority of our current diet comprises a mix of carbohydrates, salt and fats. These food combinations were not previously available in nature, but nowadays they can be found on every street corner. The reward areas in our brain respond very strongly to these foods. That is because we naturally lived in scarcity, just like other animals. However, now, many years later, our environments have evolved faster than our brains. We still have the impulse to act from a position of scarcity, which means that we still always find it hard to say no to tasty and unhealthy food. And that also explains why we are so receptive to food adverts, for example.”
How can we break this pattern in our brains?
Aarts: “It can help to temporarily switch to a different environment. For example, if you are used to passing by a supermarket on your way to work and picking up a croissant there without thinking, it would be advisable to try to find a different route that doesn’t pass the supermarket, to prevent yourself from being tempted. After a while, your croissant habit will be out of your system.”
Taking a vacation, in the summer for example, can also help with changing your environment. Speaking of which: what foods can you best eat during the summer to stay active and healthy over the winter? Aarts: “It is a good question, but it is unfortunately not possible to eat ‘in advance’ in the summer and still feel an effect in the winter. Nutrition partly depends on our gut bacteria, and you can change these – both positively and negatively – within just five days of switching to a new diet. If you start eating healthily in the summer, then you have to maintain it. That means eating healthily over the winter, too.”
This story is part of Recharge's summer series, in which readers are given the opportunity to ask scientists a question. The Recharge editors then go and talk with Radboud University scientists to find the answers. This time, the question was: What should you eat in the summer to stay active and healthy over the winter?
Photo: Brooke Lark via Unsplash