What’s in a jar of brain food: If you ever find yourself poking around in our kitchen you will eventually find our jar of munchies. Inside the jar is a selection of fruits, nuts and other ‘munchie-style’ foods. It occurred to me that perhaps I should find out what brain healthy nutritional benefit if any, we could be getting from what is often our favourite dish of the day.
Here is just a small selection of what you can find in our munchie jar which I have compared to chocolate chip cookies:
What’s in our jar of brain food
| Per 100 grams( 1/2 cup/ 4 oz) | Pistachio nuts | Raisins | Dried banana | Roasted barley | Salted peanuts | Chocolate chip cookies |
| Vitamin A | 11 | 0.18 | 1.91 | |||
| Vitamin D | 8 | 6.00 | 18 | |||
| Vitamin E | 8 | |||||
| Vitamin K | 4.79 | 0.74 | ||||
| B1 – thiamin | 58 | 12.00 | 3.33 | 5.34 | 45.99 | 16 |
| B2 – riboflavin | 9 | 5.38 | 7.06 | 1.77 | 8.82 | 14 |
| B3 – niacin | 7 | 4.50 | 3.20 | 7.1 | 66 | 12 |
| B6 – pyridoxine | 85 | 13.50 | 34 | 4.50 | 19.50 | 2 |
| B9 – folic acid/folate | 13 | 0.90 | 5.63 | 2.02 | 66 | 16 |
| B12 – cobalamin | ||||||
| Magnesium | 30 | 8.97 | 8.55 | 5.55 | 45.99 | 12 |
| Omega-3 | 1.26 | 1.67 | ||||
| Potassium | 29 | 23.34 | 14 | 3.29 | 22.05 | 142 |
| Choline | ||||||
| Iron | 23 | 12.51 | 2.06 | 5.78 | 27.84 | 20 |
| Selenium | 10 | 26 | 11.28 | 7 |
The list of vitamins and minerals found in our munchie jar are those mostly sited as providing vital nutrients for the brain to help combat and manage degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and dementia.
