what was discovered?

Does it sound hard to believe that the food you eat could help you remember better and for longer in your life, even protecting you from Alzheimer's disease?

Well, the food we eat provides our bodies with the building bricks, or molecules, needed to make every living cell in our body - including our brain cells.  So, if we eat food which can be broken down into the tiny molecules that makes it up, we can give our body the molecules that our cells need to work well and make new cells... then that would be a healthy diet!

Some molecules must be eaten - our body cannot make them from other smaller molecules, and if we don't get them then our cells don't work properly.  We can end up with deficiency diseases .

You have probably heard of vitamins - there are lots of different vitamins, all very important for staying healthy, and each of them is a different molecule that has a vital job to do in the cells of our body.  Don't eat vitamins, and your cells (and you!) will suffer.

But there are other essential molecules, that must be eaten because our body cannot make them.  Have you heard of amino acids, which are strung together like a necklace to make proteins, which help to make our cells and control all the biochemical reactions inside them? Some amino acids can be made inside our cells, but others are called essential amino acids because we must eat them to stay healthy.

There are some essential fatty acids too - which help membranes work properly (think of a membrane like a 'clever' bag around the cell - it can control what goes in and out of the cell as well as making many of the tiny organelles inside cells that carry out all the important functions for life.

The Mediterranean diet is rich in vitamins and essential fatty acids and amino acids - and that is just the start... what other aspects of the diet do you think are good for health, especially for our brain cells?

Action:

The best action for today is to eat a terrific meal containing foods typical of a Mediterranean diet - not only are they healthy, but they taste great too!

Maybe you just ate?  Check out the nutritional value of your meal in the "Have-a-bite" section of the Nutrition Cafe - here!