Take it from the rats: A junk food diet can cause long-term damage to adolescent brains
Researchers wondered about the impact of a fat-filled, sugary Western diet during adolescence, when the brain is undergoing significant development. (Photo/iStock)
Rats fed a diet full of fat and sugar in adolescence suffered memory impairment, USC researchers found. The study reinforces the important link between the gut and the brain.
A new USC-led study on rats that feasted on a high-fat, sugary diet raises the possibility that a junk food-filled diet in teens may disrupt their brains’ memory ability for a long time.
“What we see not just in this paper, but in some of our other recent work, is that if these rats grew up on this junk food diet, then they have these memory impairments that don’t go away,” said Scott Kanoski, a professor of biological sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “If you just simply put them on a healthy diet, these effects unfortunately last well into adulthood.”
In developing the study, Kanoski and lead author and postdoctoral research fellow Anna Hayes considered that prior research has shown a link between poor diet and Alzheimer’s disease. People who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease tend to have lower levels of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine in the brain that is essential for memory and functions such as learning, attention, arousal and involuntary muscle movement.
