Vegetarians, vegans and pescatarians have a better memory than meat-eaters, study claims

Adults were given a list of words to memorise and then tested on how many they could recall

People who consumed a large amount of meat and fish ranked lowest for memory recall (PA)

Opting for a vegetarian, vegan or pescatarian diet could boost your memory, a new study has claimed.

“Adherence to a plant-based rather than a meat-based diet results in improved short-term verbal memory,” wrote Pinar Sengul, who led the study at Birbeck University of London.

A group of 62 adults, aged 40 and above, were divided up by their diet; vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, meat-eaters with low fish or meat consumption, and meat-eaters with high meat or fish consumption.

Scientists used two scales to assess how well people’s memory functioned and how well they slept. They found that those who had a pescatarian diet had the best memory of any of the groups. This was followed by vegetarians and then vegans.

People who consumed a large amount of meat and fish ranked lowest for memory recall.

“Diet was found to have a significant effect on memory but no significant effect on sleep quality,” the study authors wrote.

However they acknowledged “the sample size may have been insufficient to capture the effects of diet on sleep.”

To test their memory, the researchers gave the adults word lists to memorise and their ability to recall the words was tested after a time delay.

Study authors recommended their work is repeated with a bigger sample size (EPA)

People were also given a list of 19 questions to assess the quality of their sleep. The authors admitted that, although they were able to draw some conclusions from their tests, their study “had a small sample size”.

They also found that women in their study were significantly better at recalling words that men and recommended that, if the study is repeated, future scientists should recruit only female or only male participants.

“The pilot study has found that there is a significant effect of gender favouring females over males in overall memory and a marginally significant effect of diet on short-term memory, with plant-based diets showing superior performance to animal-based diets,” the study, which was published in the Clinical Nutrition journal, concluded.

“No significant effect of diet on sleep quality was found. The results suggest that a similar study with a much larger sample size would make a major contribution to resolving the scientific uncertainties regarding the effects of diet on memory and other neural mechanisms.”

Previous studies have found links between diet and physical and mental performance. Vegan diets have been connected to improved cardiovascular performance and mediterraen diets have been linked with a reduced risk of neurodegenerative diseases.