Junk Food Can Drain Your Brain and Your Energy

In 1942, nutritionist Victor Lindlahr, who was a strong believer in the idea that food controls health, published You Are What You Eat: How to Win and Keep Health with Diet. Although he wasn’t the first to propose the notion, his work appears to be the vehicle that took the phrase “you are what you eat” into public awareness, and as scientists began to learn more about how food affects the body and mind, the idea took on even more merit. Today, we know that a high-fat diet, consumed long term, can lead to problems such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and a decline in cognitive ability, to name a few. But a recent study by researchers at Oxford University shows it may only take a few days for fat-laden food to begin wreaking havoc on our health.
To learn more about the short-term effects of a high-fat diet, the researchers conducted an extensive experiment with 32 rats. The rodents were fed a low-fat diet, comprised of 7.5 percent fat, for two months as they trained to complete a challenging maze and to run on a treadmill. The maze consisted of eight different paths with a sweetened condensed milk treat at the end. The goal was for the rats to find the treat without re-entering a corridor where they had already been. Once all the rats had mastered the maze, it was wiped down with alcohol, forcing them to rely on memory rather than their sense of smell. Read more…