EATING less doesn’t just boost physical health. In elderly people, it seems to improve memory, too.
As well as extending lifespan in mice, restricting calorie intake has been shown to boost cognitive ability in elderly animals.
To see if the cognitive benefit held for people, Agnes Flöel and colleagues at the University of Münster in Germany tested the short-term memory of 50 people, with an average age of 60. The people were overweight, but not obese, and one-third of them were instructed to eat 30 per cent fewer calories than normal each day.
After three months, the dieters…
