ABOUT COFFEE AND FISH

According to a news piece on Yahoo! (the whole story is here):

"[...] researchers at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago followed more than 3000 men and women for six years to see how diet affected memory.
People who ate fish at least once a week had a 10 percent slower decline compared with those who did not eat fish, a difference that gave them the memory and thinking ability of a person three years younger. [...]"

The author links the positive effect to Omega 3 fatty acids, but there's no claim in the article that connects the increase to Omega 3! Sometimes I do not like the oversimplification of some piece of news. For example, how much fish did the person eat a week? 10z or 1lb? Does the type of fish make a difference? Does a fish stick at Long John Silver count as fish? And, in this case, what about all the fat in those sticks? Finally, was the difference perceived in person of all ages or just in a group?

The piece continues:

Researchers from the University of Innsbruck in Austria used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the brain activity of people working on a memory task. The volunteers were tested twice, once after receiving the caffeine equivalent of about two cups of coffee, and once without any caffeine. Caffeine improved the memory skills and reactions times of the volunteers. In addition,
caffeine increased brain activity in two locations-the memory-rich frontal lobe and the attention-controlling anterior cingulum. Without caffeine, there was no increase in brain activity. So if memory problems are a major concern for you, and if you don't have a medical condition that precludes caffeine, feel free to indulge in a cup or two in the morning to jump-start your brain.

Being a coffee lover, I liked the news; but does it apply to the muddy, weak liquid sold as coffee in most places in the US? That's a good. At least that's something we don't need to remember doing. It is hard to remember eating fish, but not hard to remember drinking coffee. Maybe the solution is fish and coffee in the morning.