That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bites-Arepa and other Brain Foods

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

Have you ever heard of Arepa, a drink designed to improve your brain health? Or maybe you've heard of other "superfoods" designed to improve your brain function. IN today's Neuroscience Bite, we discuss the neuroscience behind brain foods. 

Hi, my name is Olaf Krigolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another Neuroscience Byte. Now, I'll start by saying kia ora, greetings from New Zealand. I'm down here on holidays with my son visiting my mother, but that's not going to stop us from releasing Neuroscience Bites or the podcast. Now, I was walking through Auckland yesterday and I saw an ad for a drink and it was called Arepa. That's A-R-E-P-A. And it was a drink designed and tested by neuroscientists for your brain. So I was curious, of course, given my day job. Now, arepa is basically blackcurrant juice with a few other things thrown into it. But the point of the story is, are there magic foods or drinks for your brain?

And the answer is no. If there was a drink that made everyone smarter, we would all drink it. They would hand it out in schools to make our kids all geniuses. We'd drink it as adults to maintain our genius status. Now with that said, there are foods that are good for your health and those foods promote brain health. So are black currants good for you? Yes. Do they make you magically smarter or a genius? No. And this is true of a kai berries and fish oil and fish and the rest of it. Definitely your brain performs better on a healthy, well-balanced, nutritious diet. There's no doubt about that. But are there magic foods that instantly make your brain smarter? No. So when you see those ads for magic foods that help

you fight fatigue and promote brain health and make you smarter, just take it with a grain of salt. My advice, try a healthy well-balanced diet and your brain will be healthy and just fine. That's all I've got for today.'s our neuroscience bite remember you can send us ideas via twitter follow me at that neuroscience guy and feel free to dm me we've got a bunch of ideas that have flowed in those are going to fuel our next five or six episodes but we need more because we're already starting to think about season four and of course remember that neuroscience guy.com you can buy our t-shirts help support the grad students in the K-Lab, or you can even support us through Patreon.

And of course, please subscribe to the podcast and thank you so much for listening. My name is Olive Kregolson and I'm That Neuroscience Guy.