Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. Something about starting my day with food I know does my brain and body good, gives me some incentive to keep that healthy momentum going.

Whether I succeed at that or not, at least I’ve got breakfast under my belt.

And truth be told, it’s not a chore. Five out of seven days a week I’m more than happy with berries and yogurt, scrambled eggs, a banana and greens smoothie or a big bowl of oatmeal.

But on weekends when the family is all around, that’s when sausage and bacon tempt my weak spot.

Yes, I know processed meats don’t do my heart health or blood sugar any favors. That’s why I limit them. But it turns out those tempting meats could be even worse than I thought, and here’s I’m working on giving them up entirely…

According to research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, every time we eat them, we may be accelerating the rate at which our brains age, and significantly raising our risks for memory loss and dementia.

Processed meat hastens cognitive decline

Harvard researchers followed 130,000 participants over an average of 43 years. To say this was no flash-in-the-pan study, may be an understatement.

They determined that people who ate approximately two servings of processed red meat a week had a significant 14 percent higher risk of dementia compared to those who ate less bacon, sausage and other processed meats — like hot dogs.

For reference, a serving was considered just two slices of bacon, one hot dog, or 2 ounces of sausage, salami, bologna or similar processed meats.

Even worse, every additional daily serving of processed red meat was associated with an extra 1.61 years of cognitive aging and 1.69 years in verbal memory loss.

To turn the tide in the opposite direction, all you need to do is substitute a daily serving of bacon, or the like, with a serving of nuts or legumes — such as a tablespoon of peanut butter, a handful of nuts or a helping of beans at lunch or dinner. Simple changes like that led to a 20 percent lower risk of developing dementia and 1.37 fewer years of brain aging.

The math makes sense for your brain

The good news is, this is a threat to your brain health we can control. If we can skip processed red meats, holding onto a healthy functioning brain into old age can become a reality.

But avoiding delicious bacon and eating more almonds, walnuts, kidney beans, black-eyed peas, chickpeas and lima beans is easier said than done. That’s why I don’t put all my eggs — or bacon, actually — in one basket…

My favorite brain-supporting nutrient is phosphatidylserine (PS for short), and no matter how healthy I eat on any given day — I take it daily to nourish my brain cells.

PS is a fatty substance that covers cell membranes in the body and is especially abundant in the neurons of your brain — for good reason: It’s a key building block in creating, maintaining and repairing brain cells.

Although the body manufactures some PS on its own, our primary sources of PS are dietary (organ meats, fatty fish, soybeans) or supplemental. This is especially important, as the body produces less of this important nutrient with age.

Phosphatidylserine has a mountain of research behind it, including one where it was shown to increase memory retention during delayed verbal recall — the kind of memory test where a person must repeat a sequence of words an hour or more after hearing them.

This type of verbal recall is one of the first memory abilities to be lost in the early stages of cognitive decline — and one of the problems observed by Harvard researchers in people eating processed meat in their study.

If you plan to keep bacon or sausage on the breakfast table, or hot dogs and salami around for lunch or dinner, keep PS on your bedside table.

Sources:

Dementia Risk Linked With Processed Red Meat — MEDPAGETODAY