Veggies For A Younger Brain

• Wednesday October 25, 2006 in: Diet and Exercise Tag(s):

  Technorati Tags: diet, health

  "Eat your vegetables, kids".

  How many times have we heard our moms say those words? Most kids hate eating veggies, comparing it to munching on grass. But over the years, a number of studies on the benefits of "munching on grass" apparently prove our mothers right. And a new study published just this week just drives that point further home.

  The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that a new study published in the medical journal Neurology reveals that consuming vegetables keep the brain young, and slow mental decline in aging people.

  On measures of mental sharpness, older people who ate more than two servings of vegetables daily appeared about five years younger at the end of the six-year study than those who ate few or no vegetables.

  The research in almost 2,000 Chicago-area men and women doesn't prove that vegetables reduce mental decline, but it adds to mounting evidence pointing in that direction. The findings also echo previous research in women only.

  According to the report, the most beneficial vegetables appear to be the green leafy ones, including spinach, kale and collards.

  To be perfectly honest, most of us already know this. We don't really need scientists telling us that vegetables will do wonders for our health. No study or research could compete with the way our mothers hammered the idea of eating our vegetables into our heads. Admittedly, however, some heads are a lot thicker than others, and never really listened to their moms. Ever wonder why strokes and heart attacks kill millions of Americans yearly?