High-Fat, High-Sugar Diet Can Lead To Cognitive Decline

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from Oregon State University have completed a study into how the sugar and fat content of a diet relates to cognitive flexibility. They found that diets with high amounts of either led to a decline in cognitive function. "This effect was most serious on the high-sugar diet, which also showed an impairment of early learning for both long-term and short-term memory." After four weeks on a high-fat or high-sugar diet, the performance of mice on various mental and physical tests started dropping. One of the scientists, Kathy Magnusson, said, "We've known for a while that too much fat and sugar are not good for you. This work suggests that fat and sugar are altering your healthy bacterial systems, and that's one of the reasons those foods aren't good for you. It's not just the food that could be influencing your brain, but an interaction between the food and microbial changes."

Comments

Re:High fat?

[nucrash]

This and more.

I have switched to low sugar, low carb, and started working out five times a week, two days of lifting, three days of cardio with running 5K or more on the weekends and managed to lose 40 lbs in 8 weeks. That's over 15% of my body mass.

While the level of insanity that I endured for this is a bit much, I can attest to the fact that the amount of crap we add in American diets is excessive to the point of "we need to stop hurting ourselves"

The biggest guidelines that I have for myself is if it's designed to sit on a shelf for a long time, it's not designed to be consumed and carbs are great, only if you have a plan to burn them off.

Re:High fat?

[CrimsonAvenger]

managed to lose 40 lbs in 8 weeks.

Losing 300+ grams (11+ oz) a day is generally considered seriously unhealthy. Yeah, you started from a seriously unhealthy weight, but continuing a diet like that is a really bad idea.