Genius

Food #2

Avocados

Avocados are an all-in-one Genius Food—the perfect food

to protect and enhance your brain. To start, they have the
highest total fat-protecting capacity of any fruit or vegetable.
This is good news for your brain, which is not only the
fattiest organ in your body, but also a magnet for oxidative
stress (a major driver of aging)—a consequence of the fact
that 25 percent of the oxygen you breathe goes to create
energy in your brain! Avocados are also rich in different
types of vitamin E (a characteristic not many supplements
can claim), and they are a potent repository for the
carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin. You may recall from
chapter 2 that these pigments can boost your brain’s
processing speed, but that they rely on fat to be properly
absorbed. Conveniently, avocados are an abundant source
of healthy fats.
Today there is an epidemic of vascular disease, not only
in the form of heart disease, but as vascular dementia, which
is the second most common form of dementia after
Alzheimer’s. Potassium works with sodium to regulate
blood pressure and is essential for vascular health, but today
we tend to consume insufficient amounts of potassium. In
fact, scientists believe that our hunter-gatherer ancestors
consumed four times as much potassium as we do today,
which may explain why hypertension, stroke, and vascular
dementia are now so common. By providing twice the
potassium content of a banana, a whole avocado is the
perfect food to nurture the brain’s estimated four hundred
miles of microvasculature.
Finally, who needs fiber supplements (or cheap,
industrially produced morning cereals) when you can eat an
avocado? One whole medium avocado contains a whopping
12 grams of fiber—food for the hungry bacteria that live in
your gut, which will ultimately pay their rent in the form of
life- and brain-sustaining compounds that reduce
inflammation, enhance insulin sensitivity, and boost growth
factors in the brain.
How to use: I try to eat a half to a whole avocado every
day. You can enjoy avocados simply sprinkled with a little
sea salt and extra-virgin olive oil. They may also be sliced
and added to salads, eggs, smoothies, or my Better Brain
Bowl (see page).
Pro tip: Avocados are known for taking a long time to
ripen, and only a day or two to foul. To keep extra avocados
from going bad, pop them in the fridge once ripe, and take
them out when ready to eat. You, 1; avocados, 0!