Butter Up Your Brain

Leave the carbs and the protein for the gym – if it’s mental gymnastics you’re up to, what you really need is fat.

That’s the finding of University of North Dakota researchers, testing (at the request of the military) what types of foods are best for pilots.

The study found that pilots who ate the fattiest foods – among them butter and gravy – had the fastest response times in brain tests and made the least mistakes when flying in tricky cloud conditions.

"We wound up analyzing the data every which way but upside down. It came out consistent every time,'' psychology professor Tom Petros, who ran the tests, told the Associated Press.

The study followed 45 student pilots to see how different foods affected their performance. Every three weeks, each pilot spent one week on one of four diets: high-fat, high-carb, high-protein and a control.

"They loved the day they got brownies,'' Glenda Lindseth, who helped run the project, told the AP. "They all got them, but some of them were a little smaller and some of them didn't have frosting.'' (How do brownies fit into a high-protein diet, you ask? The researchers kept the menus of all four diets as similar as possible, tweaking ingredients and in some cases add-ons like drinks and sauces.)

A sample meal: Thin crusted extra meat and cheese pizza for the fat diet, a thin crusted chicken supreme pizza for the carbohydrate diet, and a grilled chicken breast with mixed salad greens, fat-free salad dressing and fat-free shredded cheese for the protein diet.

"I could tell the difference on how well I was doing on the different diets,'' study participant Jeremy Ternes told the AP. "There were times I thought, 'Wow, I was a lot more on today as compared to last week.'''

But before you pile on the butter: Researchers said the study is not aimed at weight control and noted that because the pilots are young, they're able to absorb a high amount of fatty acids for brain development. Plus, the findings require further study.

Ah, quite literally a gravy train for some lucky participants.

Photo courtesy Robert S. Donovan via Flickr.