Brains for Change

After spending just a few days in Portugal, I’ve eaten an embarrassing amount of pastries. There’s one in particular that has earned global recognition and the seat as the hallmark of Portugal. The Pastel de Belém. Named the best pastry in the world in 2025, the Pastel de Belém is a pastry filled with creamy egg custard. And it might be one of the best desserts I’ve ever had. On just the day we arrived, I had five. But I didn’t feel overly bloated, or feel a glucose spike. Even while continuing this pastry-filled diet, I didn’t gain any weight.

After some (joyful) confusion and musing, I realized two key differences between Portuguese food and lifestyle and that of the typical America.

While, in America, a typical dessert might come in the form of a packaged sweet, a box of cookies, or a candy chocolate bar, most Portuguese desserts aren’t packaged. They’re made with real ingredients in local bakeries that have been run by families for generations. They’re trusted by locals for the integrity of their practice. Unlike the Big Food companies that dominate the food industry in America, these bakeries and patisseries don’t use chemicals or artificial additives to make their foods. Most follow the same recipes as those of their grandparents or great-grandparents.

This lack of ultra-processed-foods (UPFs) allows locals and tourists (like me) lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, and even early cognitive decline.

Moreover, Portugal is hilly. Very hilly. Unlike most of the grid-like, modern streets of American cities, the windy, narrow roads of Porto and Lisbon often make walking to your next destination a more appealing mode of transportation than automobile.

Walking, as hard as it may be to believe, is a great workout not just for your legs, but for your brain as well. It’s also an extremely accessible, cheap, and a relatively easy workout, especially for families and seniors. Walking outdoors has been shown to boost memory, attention, and executive function. A study from the University of Pittsburgh found that older adults who walked 6-9 miles per day experienced slower cognitive decline.

Walking also lowers blood pressure, improves cardiovascular health, regulates blood sugar, and helps manage weight. Many well-known Instagram workout-gurus have ditched high-impact workouts for just ten thousand steps a day.

Being in Portugal, I was walking over ten thousand steps each day. Most days, I hit over 15,000.

So that was it. Those two seemingly small things made all the difference in my health, and I even felt it!

Obviously, UPFs aren’t going away anytime soon, especially in America, and I’m not suggesting we forego the neatly paved and organized roads of New York, Boston, and Los Angeles for 13th century Moorish design.

But if Americans became more educated about the detriments of UPFs and the benefits of walking, they could make simple yet effective changes to their lifestyles and possibly improve their longevity.

A crucial form of advocacy and public policy is informing. Lifestyle improvements across a country can begin with something as simple as informative posters and flyers. It’s time we ditched sitting around (literally) and share how to easily and efficiently improve wellbeing and longevity with simple improvements.