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Eating This Common Food Every Day Could Change Your Brain, Study Finds

A small trial linked daily tomato paste to modest gains in attention and memory, along with subtle changes in brain-network activity.

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Tomatoes might be changing the way your brain functions. The changes are small and subtle, but still noticeable to researchers and laboratory tests, and they go well beyond the humble tomato’s ability to outshine bacon in a BLT.

Tomatoes are red because of an antioxidant called lycopene. It can cross the blood-brain barrier, which is where substances get caught up, making potential treatments for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s so tricky to pin down. This ability to cross that barrier has made scientists wonder whether it can affect how the brain functions.

In a randomized clinical trial published in Antioxidants,........

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