digest
Welcome to today's Quick Brain Challenge. If you're watching this on video on YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram, you can see I'm in the Quick Brain kitchen, and we're going to talk about quick brain snacks. That is your challenge, because what you eat matters, especially for your gray matter.
The episodes I'm going to be referencing, you can see our notes at jimkwik.com/snnotes, and I'll put links in the show notes for those episodes. The first is Dr. Lisa Mosconi, who talks about neuronutrition, which is amazing. She's a neuroscientist and also a nutritionist, and we go deep in that area of neuronutrition.
Here in the kitchen, what I'm going to ask you to do as part of your challenge is every single day incorporate one simple brain food into your day, and make it a conscious effort. For me, I make it really convenient, because I believe that in order to create a new habit you have to make it really easy. It's not necessarily about trying harder. Sometimes it's about trying easier. Literally, snacks. Instead of having a snack that's not good for you, control your environment, just like we talked about controlling where the phone is in the home, and controlling where you do your work and your creative space. Make sure you monitor and control your environment.
In my environment I have a lot of brain foods. Two of my favorite brain foods are right in front of me, and these are the snacks I have. Number one, blueberries. I like to refer to them as brain berries. Blueberries are full of antioxidants, which are very neuroprotective, and they also taste amazing. Blackberries are also extraordinary for your mind.
The other snack I have here is walnuts. I love walnuts, and walnuts are kind of interesting. When you look at a walnut, it looks like the human brain. There's science behind this, but it's also a great mnemonic memory device. Certain foods look like the organ they support. For example, a tomato has four chambers, just like the human heart. If you take a carrot and slice it, it looks like the human eye. Those are little memory aids. When I look at a walnut, it looks like a brain, and so these foods provide a sign from nature to help you remember what they're good for.
By the way, walnuts are great sources of omega-3s, which are great for the brain, and they're also high in vitamin E, which is very neuroprotective for brain cells. So what do you do? You take this, have a snack, and take it with you to work or to school. Little things become a lot, because what you want to remember is that consistency compounds. Consistency compounds and becomes additive, if you will, because you can know things, but the whole point of this Quick Brain Challenge is to take knowledge and turn it into power. The only way it becomes power is when you apply it.
So as part of this challenge, take a photograph of your favorite brain food, post it online, and share it with people using the hashtag #QuickBrainChallenge. We'll share some of our very favorites. You can find me at @JimKwik on Twitter, on Facebook, and on Instagram. That's your assignment.
If you want to go deeper into this subject, listen to our podcast episodes with Dr. Lisa Mosconi and with Max Lugavere, and listen to my episode on how to memorize and remember the top 10 favorite brain foods in this community. Remember, what you eat matters, especially for your gray matter. Enjoy the challenge, and I'll see you in our next episode.