Will eating a half a stick of butter a day make you smarter?

Mark Frauenfelder 10:05 am Thu Oct 14, 2010

Does eating a lot of butter every day improve brain function? To find out, Eri Gentry (co-founder of BioCurious and a MAKE contributor) is calling for volunteers to eat three tablespoons of butter or coconut fat each day and take a daily math quiz.

Will eating one of these fats improve your math performance? Based on Seth Roberts' butter and math study, recently presented at a Bay Area Quantified Self Show & Tell, during which Seth ate half a stick of butter each day and performed better in math, we expect the answer to be yes.

To test this theory across multiple participants and two types of fats, from October 20 – November 12, I will run Butter Mind & Coconut Mind, meant to collect data on the ingestion of specific "food fats" and math scores/times.

To qualify for the study, you must be willing to eat 3TBS of butter or coconut oil (sticking to the same one) for 8 days and do a 32 problem simple math test for 24 days. You must have access to the internet to submit your scores.

Will Butter Make You Smarter? Introducing Butter Mind…and Coconut Mind

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