Researchers have found that eating vegetables appears to help keep the brain young and may slow the mental decline sometimes associated with growing old.

Elderly people who reported eating at least 2.8 servings of vegetables a day compared to people who ate less than one serving a day saw their rate of memory loss and other mental decline slow by 40 percent over six years, the researchers found.

People who ate the most green leafy vegetables such as lettuce and spinach had the least memory loss, on average. Next best were yellow vegetables such as squash and cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli. Legumes such as peanuts and lentils had the least effect, and eating fruit frequently did not have any apparent effect at all.

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