At a Mr. Lee’s restaurant (a Chinese chain), I started chatting with a girl sitting near me. I told her I was a psychology professor. “You know what people are thinking,” she said. I lamely said, no, I study what foods make the brain work best.
“I don’t know the English word for it,” she said. She drew a walnut. Good for your brain, her parents had told her. I was astonished. When I got to China, my arithmetic scores mysteriously improved. I had expected them to get worse, if anything. I tried to duplicate my American diet in Beijing but it is hard to duplicate the flaxseed oil. (Chinese flaxseed oil is worthless. I can bring it from America but not easily, and it’s impossible to keep it cold the whole way.) I had tested various explanations of the improvement but none held up.
I was starting to believe the reason for the improvement was walnuts. I have two servings/day of yogurt, each time with walnuts. I ate a lot of yogurt with walnuts in Berkeley, too; this was not a dramatic change. But maybe I eat more walnuts in China, and maybe the walnuts have more omega-3. Maybe the walnuts are fresher. In Berkeley I put ground flaxseed in my yogurt (in addition to walnuts), without obvious improvement. Walnuts are lower in omega-3 than flaxseeds.
A Chinese friend of mine had told me the same thing — that her parents had said that walnuts are good for the brain. This is a common Chinese belief, mingled with the curious idea that they are good for the brain because they look like a brain. The Wikipedia entry for walnut, which includes its use in Chinese medicine, says nothing about improving brain function. This long article about the benefits of walnuts doesn’t connect them directly with better brain function. It does say they are considered “brain food” because of high omega-3 content and links to a page that says 1/4 cup of walnuts (25 g) has 2.3 g of omega-3. I am now consuming 2 tablespoons/day of flaxseed oil, which contains 14 g of omega-3. I have sometimes consumed 3 or 4 tablespoons/day (with 21 or 28 g omega-3). You can see why 2 g doesn’t impress me, especially when added to 14 g. I thought I was getting the optimal amount of omega-3 from flaxseed oil. Adding a small amount to the optimal amount shouldn’t have a noticeable effect. This article says walnuts are brain food because of their lecithin content. Lecithin is used to make acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter.
Miraculously I can gather better evidence by myself, in a month, than all the evidence I’ve found. I simply vary how much walnuts I eat and see what happens to my arithmetic score. The experiment is worth doing because of the common Chinese belief and my puzzlingly good scores. Maybe walnuts help a brain that is already getting plenty of omega-3. Maybe not.
Indians believe walnut is good for the brain, because it looks like a brain.
Many culture, such as the Chinese and Indian (see SB’s comment above) view form and function as connected in terms of their effects on human health and well being. In some cases this makes sense. If you have a problem with fertility, take tiger penis (or some reproductive organ) and it should help you. The reproductive organs of other animals likely have many of the same compounds that our endocrine system uses and so you’re basically taking a drug. In other cases, like walnuts, the link between form and function is likely just coincidental. Are there other things that look like brains (brain coral?) that won’t help with brain function when consumed? Are there other things that don’t look like brains (sardines) that will? It would be fascinating to see how systematically these principles are applied in the societies that practice them.
Here is an interesting anecdote that my Indian colleague related. It turns out that people used to sprinkle turmeric on the threshold of the front door of their house in India. As it turns out, due to the anti-bacterial action of the turmeric, this may have produced some benefits, as the bacteria on the bottom of people’s feet would have been destroyed/diminished as they entered the house. However, at some point, this turned into a superstition. People thought it was THE COLOR that was beneficial and so they started painting the house entrance with the color of turmeric.
Maybe they don’t put fluoride into the tap water, like they do in some US cities. You can check that with the water supplier. They say they add it because it allegedly reduces suicide and criminal rates.
And maybe you leave out artificial sweetener and other excitotoxins, possibly unknowingly.
https://web.me.com/rblaylock/
And maybe they don’t have the chemtrails there that you may have been victim to in the past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrail_conspiracy_theory
People with a still usable brain can see that some of the trails slowly descend and widen. Well, I can.
You get the idea
Since the putative brain-enhancing effect of the walnuts is probably subtle, can we reasonably expect the Chinese to have discovered it in the absence of careful, quantitative testing?
I’ve experimented with making a type of walnut butter by using a blender to combine shelled walnuts and coconut oil. It tastes better than coconut oil alone, though it’s still not exactly tasty. I’ve been eating it in addition to flaxseed oil. Now that I think about it, though, I wonder if grinding-up the walnuts makes the omega-3 degrade any faster.
Could it be the L-arginine (a precursor to nitric oxide) content in walnuts?
The use of similarities can be seen also in herbal remedies (maybe first they use the plant because a similarity in shape with the organ and then discard if useless) and Bach Flower Remedies (e.g. the flower that opens early is good to be more alert). Sorry for the oversimplification.
interesting that she would have been able to draw a walnut. most americans couldn’t. is realistic drawing something that many or most chinese learn as part of their education?
q, she couldn’t really draw a walnut but since I had an idea I was able to figure it out.
Alex, yes, that is what I find most interesting: if it turns out the Chinese belief is right, how did they notice?
Gunnar, you are right the water is different. In America I drink filtered tap water. In China, I drink bottled water with minerals added. In both countries I eat a lot of Splenda.
https://books.google.com/books?id=yuaSJvZr3ikC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=walnut+oil+Lecithin&source=bl&ots=qf2uWLAWjZ&sig=nRpesXgE4PyCwo8xJ2vDOdAJtO8&hl=en&ei=Yj3GTKGaNcO78gaS260p&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&sqi=2&ved=0CEkQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=walnut%20oil%20Lecithin&f=false
I was hoping that walnut oil had Lecithin, but it appears it doesn’t.
Also:
https://www.bbaby.us/that-kind-of-walnut-oil-product-effect-good-child-clever-walnut-oil-soft-capsule.html
Seth, I’m surprised that you eat a lot of Splenda. I used to eat it, but I gave it up after reading your blog post titled, “Splenda Reduces Gut Bacteria in Rats” (from Nov. 22, 2009). Do you now have reason to believe that Splenda is less harmful than other sweeteners?
Alex, no I don’t have reason to believe it is less harmful. You make a good point, I should try giving it up and see what happens.
Stephen, thanks for the references. The book makes a good point, that walnuts have far more omega-6 than omega-3. They have more omega-3 than other nuts but, if omega-6 is bad, you could easily argue that walnuts should have a bad effect on brain function.
I replaced Splenda with Now Stevia Balance, which contains 900 mg inulin per packet. Inulin is a prebiotic; as you are probably aware, prebiotics stimulate the growth of helpful gut bacteria. I have migrated to the belief that prebiotics are as important as probiotics. Now that I ingest more prebiotics daily, I have fewer issues with dairy foods.
As for walnuts, I wonder if a Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner would recommend walnuts for brain function? There may be a difference between folklore and what TCM recommends.
Another thing about walnuts . . . the Omega 6 to 3 ratio of English walnuts is 4:1 (or 5:1, depending on source), which is a decent ratio for a food which is typically added to a meal. If one’s meal consists of rice, soy sauce, vegetables, fish, and a few walnuts, the overall ratio probably calculates close to a desirable Omega 6:3 ratio.
I think you are going to be hard pressed to find any chemical component to support the walnut-brain theory. It is based on a sort of doctrine of correspondence and it will defy any rational investigation.
Let’s take another example of this. According to the Chinese, beans will help the kidneys (because most beans look something like a kidney). I dare you to find a chemical component of beans that are particularly good for the kidneys.
What we are dealing with here is human projection. The same logic that gave the planet Mars its name and said that it ruled anger, aggression and war on Earth (most certainly in part because of its red color). Now, if you want to consider whether or not such a thing is true, you may want to look at statistics (as Gauqelin did with Mars), but I don’t think if you went up and took a soil sample (or measured any other physical parameters) of Mars that you would find anything that would suggest that it could influence aggression on Earth. Same goes for walnuts, beans, or tiger testicles, etc, vis a vis human health.
Seth, Alex – people have instincts for what is good for them. Babies self-select a balanced diet when given a variety of foods to choose from freely. This implies that there is a nutrition ‘sense’. This sense may be strong enough to communicate with the conscious mind. If only a few ‘sensitives’ develop the idea that walnuts enhance the brain, they may disseminate the idea into their culture even if most people are not nutritionally sensitive.
Some facts about walnuts and cleverness:
1. FACT: There are lots of articles in scientific and medical journals about studies supposedly showing the health benefits of walnuts.
2. FACT: Many of those studies were funded by the California Walnut Commission.
3. CONCLUSION: Walnut lobbyists are very clever people.
They are especially clever in their ability to influence Chinese folklore.
Paleo Diet Basics: Why I Eat Walnuts.Contains a number of links to possible benefits of eating walnuts:
Cancer Prevention
Cardiovascular Health
Cognitive Health
Simplified this could be summed up as “walnuts are good for the brain”:
Alzheimer’s breakthrough – scientists discover omega-3s override the bad gene causing Alzheimer’s
https://www.NaturalNews.com/031499_omega-3s_Alzheimers.html
Gunnar,
Since I wrote this post I’ve learned more. I don’t think walnuts are good for the brain.