Can diet improve memory? BBC News Review

Could apples, berries and cacao improve our memory as we get older?

This is News Review from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil.

And I'm Beth.

Make sure you watch to the end to learn vocabulary to talk about this story.

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  and try the quiz on our website. Now, the story.

What you eat could improve your memory as you age.

That's according to new research in the US that found people

with a diet rich in flavanols may be less likely to lose their memory.

The substance is found in tea,

berries, apples and cacao -

the seed that chocolate is made from. But while

some scientists think eating more dark chocolate could help, others say

more research is needed.

You have been looking at the headlines, Beth, whats the vocabulary?

We have 'keep something at bay', 'stave off' and 'drive'.

This is News Review from BBC Learning English.

Let's look at our first headline. This is from the Mail Online...

So, this headline is suggesting that eating dark chocolate can help

prevent you from losing your memory as you get older. The expression

we are looking at is 'keep something at bay'.

It's quite a strange sounding expression. What does it mean?

Well, quite simply, it means

'to stop something bad or dangerous,

harmful, from happening to you.

So, in this case, the harmful thing is memory loss.

We want to prevent memory loss,

so we want to keep it at bay.

Yes, and this expression, does have a wider use.

It's not only about memory loss.

No, it's not. We can use it for lots of harmful things,

but it is often related to health.

So, for example, washing your hands can keep infections at bay

or exercising can keep heart disease at bay.

Yes and take note, we can also use the word 'hold'

instead of 'keep'. 'Hold something at bay'.

It means exactly the same thing.

Let's look at that again.

Let's look at our next headline.

This is from The Guardian.

Again, this headline is about preventing something bad

from happening to us, in this case, memory loss.

The expression we're going to look at is 'stave off'. Now, that word 'stave' -

that's an old fashioned-sounding word for a long stick, isn't it?

It is, yeah, and it might help you to think

about that long stick to understand this expression.

So, Neil, imagine something is physically threatening you.

Maybe a pack of wild dogs and you have a long stick.

What are you going to do with it?

Well, if a pack of wild dogs was attacking me,

I would use the long stick to protect myself.

Maybe I could wave it and the dogs would go away.

That's a strong mental image.

It might help you to remember the meaning of this phrasal verb,

but, actually, we don't usually use stave off in a literal sense any more.

We don't, but it does have the same meaning.

It just means to prevent something bad from happening.

Just like our first expression, 'keep something at bay' and again,

this is something we often use with health.

Some people say that drinking orange juice can stave off a cold,

but we can also use it to mean prevent other general negative things.

Yes. And one more interesting thing to note 'stave off'

is a phrasal verb and it's the kind of phrasal verb that

you can split in the middle.

So, you could say 'orange juice staves off colds'

or you can say 'orange juice staves colds off'. Let's look at that again.

Let's look at our next headline.

This is from The Independent...

So, this headline is looking at the same story,

but from the opposite angle. It's saying that a diet low in flavanols,

now, that's that substance that you find in apples, berries,

tea and cacao, a diet low in that, could cause memory loss and the word

we're looking at is 'drive' - a familiar word used differently here.

Yes, but we're not talking about cars here.

So, drive actually has a wider meaning than the one

we all know connected to cars

and driving. It can also mean 'to force something in a certain direction'.

Yes, so when the headline says that a diet, low in flavanols,

drives memory loss,

it means that that diet pushes in the direction of memory loss.

In the same way,

when you drive a car,

actually, what you're doing is just forcing it to go in a certain direction.

OK, let's look at that again.

We've had 'keep something at bay' -

prevent something bad affecting you.

'Stave off' -

also, prevents something bad affecting you.

And 'drive' - force in a certain direction.

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