The supermarket chain has developed an online tool to match foods to the cognitive functions required to tackle certain subjects – but food experts emphasise it doesn’t take the place of revising
The supermarket chain Albert Heijn has launched an online tool to help students currently cramming for exams to make specific food choices based on the cognitive skills needed for specific disciplines. Aside from getting students to shop at AH outlets, the chain is pointing out that certain foods are linked to specific cognitive functions.
On BrainBooster , students must upload their study schedules, whereupon they receive personalised advice on snacks and meals they can eat to stimulate the parts of their brain most used for certain learning objectives.
Healthy diet, healthy brain
If a student has a statistics exam that day, for instance, they should eat an omelette with spinach and salmon for breakfast. Rich in omega-3 and choline, it will help with memory and recall. The website will return an entire eating plan for students based on when each exam falls and study needs between exams.
“This is very clever marketing,” says KU Leuven endocrinologist Nele Steenackers. “But the suggested dietary choices are indeed accurate. Plenty of research has been done into how a healthy diet affects brain function. This shows that very specific nutrients have an impact on your cognitive abilities, your memory or your concentration.”
The tool is based on Bloom’s taxonomy, developed in the 1950s by American educational experts, led by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom. It classified learning objectives into broad categories of cognitive, emotional and psychomotor skills.
The cognitive category has since been further broken down into six processes: remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate and create. Vitamins, minerals, fatty acids and other nutritional compounds are associated with each of these processes.
If students are going to eat less junk food because of this, then that’s all well and good
Dietician Jennifer Cnops
So while spinach and salmon will help with memory, blueberries – rich in antioxidants – are linked more to evaluating and analysing – should you have a maths exam. AH’s Brain Booster contains some 20,000 disciplines and has coupled the processes need to tackle them to certain foods. It also suggests times during the day to eat the foods to address activation, endurance and a recovery period after the exam.
“It’s not like a student is going to suddenly double their points if they eat spinach or blueberries,” notes Steenackers. “But those foods do influence brain health.”
But, emphasises Brussels bioengineer and dietician Jennifer Cnops, “the body is much more complex that food alone. Sleep, stress and exercise also play important roles during exam revision. But if students are going to eat less junk food because of this, then that’s all well and good.”