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Forgetting something? Can’t recall the actor’s name — you know, the one from that movie?

Maybe you need more red wine and cherries in your diet, a new study suggests.

Researchers have found that people whose diets were poor in flavanols — a substance found in certain foods — had better memories after three years of taking flavanol supplements.

“These are exciting results because they suggest that there is an optimum amount of flavanols in the diet,” Gunter Kuhnle, study co-author and professor of Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Reading in the UK, said in a news release.

Red wine, black and green tea, dark chocolate, beans, kale, watercress, onions and fruits like cherries, blackberries, black grapes and apples contain healthy amounts of flavanols, according to experts.

Researchers asked more than 3,562 older adults to take either a 500 mg flavanol supplement in pill form or a placebo for three years. Their memory was tested on an annual basis, using online tests of short-term memory.

Additionally, at the beginning of the study period and at yearly intervals, participants’ urine was sampled to determine their flavanol levels.

For the people who already had plenty of flavanols in their diets at the beginning of the study period, there wasn’t much improvement in memory, even if they took the flavanol supplements.

But among the people whose diets started off low in flavanol, their memory scores jumped by 16% after just one year of taking the flavanol supplements. And their improvement in memory was sustained over the three-year period.

“The improvement … raises the possibility of using flavanol-rich diets or supplements to improve cognitive function in older adults,” study co-author Adam Brickman, professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University, said in a news release.

Health experts noted that the study points to the need for additional research into how nutrients are needed to maintain a healthy brain into old age.

“In this century, as we are living longer, research is starting to reveal that different nutrients are needed to fortify our aging minds,” study co-author Dr. Scott Small said in a news release.

“Our study, which relies on biomarkers of flavanol consumption, can be used as a template by other researchers to identify additional, necessary nutrients,” Small added.

But not all scientists were enthusiastic about the results of the study, which was partly funded by Mars, a maker of chocolate and other candies.

“I’m afraid that the results obtained do not support the claim that flavanols improve memory function,” David Curtis, honorary professor in the Genetics Institute at University College London, told Science Media Centre.

“Even in the group who initially had low flavanol consumption, those taking a flavanol supplement for years had about the same memory function as those taking placebo and any differences were well within chance expectation,” Curtis said.

Other scientists caution that the study’s focus on short-term memory doesn’t reveal much about the risks of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

“[I]t’s important to make the distinction between age-related memory loss and dementia. While the primary sign of Alzheimer’s disease is loss of episodic memory, age-related memory loss is common for everyone,” Davide Bruno, a researcher at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK, told Science Media Centre.

Though it’s possible that flavanols might play some role in the development of dementia, the supplement’s “effects on memory appear to be modest, and limited to those individuals with a lower quality diet at the start of the study,” Bruno added.

Source: New York Post