Eating like Leslie Knope can mess with your brain
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2020-02-19 11:01
Junk food can mess with your brain, say Aussie researchers who fed ‘lean, healthy young people’ a Western-style junk food diet of waffles, milkshakes and fast food for a week. After just a week of this tasty Leslie Knope-style diet, the participants suffered impaired function of the hippocampus – the area of the brain that supports memory and appetite – compared with those on the control diet. This caused them to experience a greater desire to eat junk food even when they were full. According to the researchers, the hippocampus usually suppresses our nice memories of junk food when we’re full, but the junk food diet seemed to undermine self-control by increasing desire.
Journal/conference: Royal Society Open Science
Link to research (DOI): 10.1098/rsos.191338
Organisation/s: Macquarie University, Griffith University
Funder: This work was supported by a grant from the Australian Research Council, DP150100105.
Media Release
From: The Royal Society
Hippocampal-dependent appetitive control is impaired by experimental exposure to a Western-style diet
Royal Society Open Science
In animals, a junk food diet rapidly impairs hippocampal function, a brain area that supports memory and also helps regulate appetite. When we see cake, chocolate or crisps, for example, we remember how nice they are to eat. When we are full the hippocampus normally supresses these memories, reducing our desire to eat. We found that lean healthy young people exposed to one week of a junk food diet developed impaired hippocampal function and relatively greater desire to eat junk food when full. Junk food may then act to undermine self-control by increasing desire.
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