The latest news from the health mavens is that fewer calories seem to have a salutory effect on memory.

In an exhaustive study of fifty people, the ones who ate the least scored 20% better at remembering; this is understandable since right off the bat, if they ate 20% less and were asked what they had for lunch, there was 20% less information to forget.

The rest of us would be hard pressed to retrieve the garni on our sandwich or the pale pink wintry tomato that only registers in our taste lexicon as a cold thing in the middle of two slices of bread. Along with eating less, we are told that ingesting dirt, particularly intestinal worms, might be helpful in developing a healthy immune system, evidenced by the fact that farm children seem less likely to develop allergies and auto-immune diseases.

I wonder whether it’s the worms that account for it or the less neurotic farm parents who don’t have time to notice whether each of their seven children is wheezing or getting hives from peanut butter. And if Johnny does develop hives, they’d be less likely to show on his un-sunblocked face or his tanned, un-helmeted head.

One doctor recommends letting children go barefoot in the dirt - but what to do about the grassy patch that’s full of microscopic lime ticks from which we urbanites have been cautioned to keep our children protectively socked and shod?

Before we get too excited about this liberating freedom to eat low-fat worms and wallow in dirt, we have to balance the above with the information that doctors’ ties, jackets, scrubs, instruments and hands are responsible for the spread of serious hospital infections.

Maybe the message should be - worms and dirt before the hospital but once there, a large bottle of alcohol at your bedside and a hefty bag of salt to ponder every contradictory salvo put out by the apparatchiks of the Health Brigade.

If all else fails, don’t forget to ask for leeches and cupping - two previously debunked therapies that have made a future from the past comeback.

In his old age, my grandfather gave up meat and ate fish heads in order to stay smart.

I used to think it was a messy, primitive habit but now they’re calling it omega 3 instead of fish heads and researchers are investigating it as a way for elderly people to ward off dementia.

My grandfather got most of his information from the Babylonian Talmud, a distant precursor of Wikipedia.

With our current emphasis on old folk wisdom and the confusing pandemic of new theories, maybe it’s a wiser text to consult than any of today’s trendy health journals.

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