The foods a person intakes will influence his or her mental performance. Certain foods will enhance creativity while others will diminish them. Modern diet plays a huge part in that scenario. For instance, the foods people ate centuries ago had better affect on the brain. Centuries ago people lived on the meat from the animals they hunted, fruits and wild greens they found and picked and berries and roots as well. In time, this diet plan changed a lot. Nowadays, most meals consist of big portions of processed and fast foods. The nutritional difference between these two diets is a big one. Probably the biggest difference is when fats are considered. Unlike the ancestors, people nowadays eat 50% more total fats. The amount of saturated fats a person intakes nowadays has doubled in time. This type of fat is found in animal products. People also consume twenty times the amount of omega-6 fats compared to omega-3 fats. Omega-3 fats are the healthier ones and can be found in fish while omega-6 can be found in processed oils.
Saturated fats
Certain studies done on animals show that too much saturated fats actually lead to physical changes in the shape of the brain cells. Too much saturated fats also interfere with insulin. These studies have shown that subjects who took too much saturated fats ended up with weaker memory and learning skills. These problems only became worse if the subjects continued consuming high amounts of saturated fats.
Omega-6 vs. Omega-3 fats
It is not only the saturated fats that may cause damage to the brain, the vegetable oils can too. The difference between the types of oil is huge and the way they affect the brain as well. The ancestors consumed only two types of polyunsaturated fats, omega-6 fats from fruits and vegetables and omega-3 fats that they got from seafood. In the modern days the introduction of processed oils changed that ratio. These processed oils can now be found in a lot of foods and apart from the the diets have too much omega-6 fats. On the other hand, nowadays people do not consume as much seafood as the ancestors did. Because of that people nowadays eat 20 times more of omega-6 fats than they eat omega-3 fats. Too much omega-6 leads to inflammation of brain tissues. If not treated, a person will end up with impaired brain functioning and memory loss. This is the reason why a person should avoid oils rich with omega-6. The healthy ratio of these oils intake needs to be restored.
Omega-3 and fish
Fish have lots of omega-3 fats but not all fish have the same amount of it. If a person wants to consume the fish with the best omega-3 quality, he or she should eat sardines, tune, mackerel, herring and salmon.
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