5 tasty recipes to keep your brain firing

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It should come as no surprise that our brain, like most parts of our body, will one day put its feet up and ease into retirement mode.

What you might find surprising is the age when this all starts happening. While certain kinds of ‘fixed’ knowledge, like vocabulary and general information, usually remain stable until your sixties, research suggests that more complex cognitive abilities like processing speed and reasoning skills begin to decline in early adulthood.

Fortunately, the level of cognitive decline we go through is influenced by the lifestyle choices we make in our younger years, especially through social contact, physical activity and how we feed ourselves. There’s good evidence that consuming omega-3s plays a role in maintaining cognitive function, and a new study has explored which parts of the brain this consumption could impact.

Researchers observed that omega-3s were correlated with entorhinal cortical volume – the area of the brain involved in learning and memory – as well as the volume of white matter, which are the nerve fibers that send messages between different parts of the brain.

We can’t guarantee, given the variety of individual diets and lifestyles, that eating omega-3s alone will keep your brain firing forever. But introducing more omega-3s to your diet is an easy (and tasty) way to support brain health.

Here are 5 recipes to get you started.