Can Eating an Avocado a Day Really Protect the Brain? A Six-Month Trial Has a Surprising Answer

Avocados are rich in healthy fats and nutrients, and many people hope they can help preserve cognitive function. But a new human trial found that eating one avocado every day for six months did not significantly improve memory or other measures of cognition.

Researchers at Loma Linda University led the randomized controlled trial. It enrolled 251 adults with larger waist circumferences, and 241 participants completed the six-month study. One group ate an avocado daily, while the other maintained its usual diet.

The researchers compared memory, information-processing speed, executive function, reaction time and working memory before and after the trial. None of the cognitive measures differed significantly between the avocado group and the control group. Age did not change the result.

Some earlier studies had observed a positive association between avocado consumption and cognitive performance. The researchers cautioned that those studies involved different designs and populations, so they could not directly establish that eating avocados improves cognition.

The team stressed that the trial does not prove avocados have no health benefits. It shows only that adding one avocado a day did not produce a measurable cognitive improvement over six months in this group, which consisted mainly of adults with larger waist circumferences. Longer research is still needed to determine whether people with different body weights or metabolic conditions might respond differently.