Dietary Effects on Cognition and Pilots' Flight Performance

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of diet on cognition and flight performance of 45 pilots. Based on a theory of self-care, this clinical study used a repeated-measure, counterbalanced crossover design. Pilots were randomly rotated through 4-day high-carbohydrate, high-protein, high-fat, and control diets. Cognitive flight performance was evaluated using a GAT-2 full-motion flight simulator. The Sternberg short-term memory test and Vandenberg's mental rotation test were used to validate cognitive flight test results. Pilots consuming a high-protein diet had significantly poorer (p < .05) overall flight performance scores than pilots consuming high-fat and high-carbohydrate diets.

Acknowledgment

This study was funded by the U.S. Army Biomedical Research Award #DAMD17-03-1-0010 and the National Institutes of Health Grant 1C06RR022088-01.

We wish to thank all the hard-working student research assistants who worked with this research project and contributed to the successful submission of this manuscript.