You become what you eat: Junk food causes long lasting damage to the brain

Have you ever felt kind of numb or sluggish in the head after eating junk food? As it turns out, junk food really does that to you. Problem is, the effect might be long lasting, perhaps indefinite.

The study

Researchers at University of Southern California have tested the effects of junk food, specifically high-fat, sugary diet, on rats from a young age. Besides the negative effect on memory, that doesn’t seem to go away, even after getting off junk food, diets of unhealthy and processed foods can be linked to e.g. Alzheimer’s disease later in life.

Studies in the same field often show these findings, even when the junk food is eaten only occationally.

Reservations

While rat studies often are used as a proxy for human studies, since the response is quite similar, mostly, we can’t draw too many conclusions from it. We do know that unhealthy foods are bad for us and that they dome with negative effects. What those negative effects are are not always easy to figure out since human studies are extremely expensive and hard to do, and control.

Conclusion

Alzheimer’s and similar diseases are quite common in humans, and especially since the introduction of junk foods in our diet (correlation might not be causation, though). We are what we eat, after all, and if you’ve ever felt energised after a good meal or moody and comatose after eating junk, I bet you can relate too.

We might not loose the ability to memorise or remember things by eating the occasional hamburger, but it does seem to have an effect!