It’s not often that high glycaemic index (GI) foods get good press, so a new Australian study which links sugary breakfast cereal to improved memory function, comes as something of a surprise.

The research by PhD student Michael Smith of the University of Western Australia was presented to the IBRO World Congress of Neuroscience in Melbourne this month. In the study, Smith compared the effects of low and high-GI cereals on the short-term cognitive powers of a group of adolescents. 37 students aged 14 to 17 years were divided into two groups, with one being given a high GI corn-based cereal and the other a low GI high fibre bran-based cereal. They were then shown a list of twenty words and tested to see how many of them they could remember.

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