Great news for all you peanut butter lovers – including me. It turns out that peanuts and peanut butter might be good for your brain. In a study published in the Clinical Nutrition Journal, researchers at the University of Barcelona studied healthy adults aged 18 to 33 and tested their memory function and other aspects of mental health. They put participants into one of three groups for six months – a group who ate skin roasted peanuts, one that had peanut butter, and a group that ate a “control” butter. After 6 months, they found that overall, peanuts and peanut butter had a positive effect on the cognitive health of the participants. Both the groups who ate peanuts and peanut butter had improvements in immediate memory recall, but only the peanut butter consumers had improvements in their overall memory function. The researchers concluded that the polyphenols found in peanuts and peanut butter were the major reason for the cognitive boosts.
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