Cheap American foods make rats (and likely people) stupid.
A study conduced by the University of Southern California (USC) has discovered that eating a lot of American ‘junk food’ during adolescents can result in impaired memory function during adulthood.
The experiment was conduced by feeding rats junk food and then seeing how their cognition compared to rats fed healthier food. The study referred to the junk food as a ‘Cafeteria diet’ (CAF) and ‘Western diet’ (WD) which they categorized as processed foods with saturated fat and simple sugars. This food was made up of big-name industrial food items, food which contains additives so dangerous that they are illegal in other countries.
“…20 % kcal from protein, 35 % kcal from carbohydrate, 45 % kcal from fat), potato chips (Ruffles Original, Frito Lay, Casa Grande, AZ, USA), chocolate-covered peanut butter cups (Reese’s Minis Unwrapped, The Hershey Company, Hershey, PA, USA), and 11 % weight/volume (w/v) high-fructose corn syrup-55 (HFCS) beverage (Best Flavors, Orange, CA, USA),” the study said in section 2.2.
While the study found that rodents which were fed these American industrial foods were cognitively impaired by the diet compared to rats which ate healthier foods, the study focused on the nutritive effects of the food while ignoring the additives found in American processed foods that are proven to cause physiological degeneration.
“Those diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease tend to display lower levels of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine in their brains. That neurotransmitter is essential to memory and many other functions like learning, attention, arousal, and involuntary muscle movement. So, researchers wondered what that might mean for younger individuals following a similar fat-filled, sugary, Western diet, especially when their brain is undergoing significant development during adolescence. By tracking the influence of the diet on the rodents’ levels of acetylcholine and having the rats undergo some memory testing, researchers successfully learned more about the important relationship between diet and memory,” Study Finds said.
After a period of 166 days eating WD the rats underwent several cognitive and medical tests before being euthanized to have their brains examined. Findings concluded that even after eating a healthy diet, the rats fed a WD were still more stupid than those who ate a healthy diet their entire lives.
“…early life WD consumption resulted in enduring memory dysfunction,” the study said in section 3.6.
This is not the only study indicating brain damage from cheap American processed foods.
“A recent study from the Radiological Society of North America backed USC’s claims,” Natural News said. “The study, led by researcher Simone Kaltenhauser from the Yale School of Medicine, reveals the correlation between childhood obesity and compromised cognitive functioning. Kaltenhauser and her team delved into this issue by analyzing data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, which encompassed a diverse sample of over 11,000 children aged nine to ten across the United States.”
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