verbal memory
People diet for many reasons - to fit into clothes, to look more attractive, or for the sake of their health. But to improve their memory? It's an interesting idea, and one that's been given fresh support by Veronica Witte and colleagues from the University of Munster in Germany.
Witte found that elderly people who slash the calories in their diet by 30% were better able to remember lists of words than people who stuck to their normal routine. It's the first experiment to show that cutting calories can improve human memory at an age when declining memory is par for the course.
The benefits…