Healthcare (Commonwealth Union) – Junk food may be quick, cheap, and tasty, but it comes with serious health risks. As awareness grows and more people question what’s on their plate, the hope is that we’ll move toward smarter food choices — without sacrificing flavor or fun.
The combination of sugar, fat, and salt stimulates the brain’s reward system in a similar way to addictive drugs. This is why a single handful of chips or one bite of a donut often turns into many more.
A groundbreaking study has established a connection between poor dietary habits and diminished spatial memory.
Recent research from the University of Sydney associates high-fat, high-sugar diets with diminished cognitive function. The findings augment an expanding corpus of information demonstrating the detrimental effects of high-fat, high-sugar (HFHS) diets on cognitive function, complementing its established physical consequences.
The study, published in the International Journal of Obesity, is the inaugural investigation into the correlation between high-fat, high-sugar diets—specifically those rich in refined sugars and saturated fats—and first-person spatial navigation in humans. Spatial navigation refers to the capacity to acquire and retain a route between two locations, a process that can reflect the condition of the brain’s hippocampus.
Dr. Dominic Tran from the Faculty of Science’s School of Psychology conducted study revealing that high-fat, high-sugar diets adversely affect several facets of cognitive function. The effects presumably focus on the hippocampus, a brain region crucial for spatial navigation and memory formation, rather than influencing the entire brain.
Dr. Tran indicated that the positive aspect is that they believe this condition is readily reversible. He pointed out that modifications in diet can enhance hippocampal health, thereby augmenting our capacity to orient ourselves in our surroundings, such as when exploring a new city or acquiring a new route home.
The research team enlisted 55 university students aged 18 to 38. All participants filled up questionnaires assessing their use of sugary and fatty foods. Their working memory was assessed by a number recall task, and their body mass index (BMI) was documented.
The experiment necessitated participants to traverse a virtual reality maze and identify a treasure chest on six occasions. The maze was encircled by notable sites that participants may utilize to recall their path. Their initial position and the site of the treasure chest remained unchanged in every experiment.
If participants discovered the treasure in under four minutes, they proceeded to the subsequent trial. If they did not locate the prize within the allotted time, they were transported to its site and granted 10 seconds to acclimate to that environment before to the subsequent challenge.
A seventh trial eliminated the treasure chest from the virtual maze, requiring individuals to locate and indicate its previous position only from memory. Individuals with reduced dietary fat and sugar levels had a greater accuracy in pinpointing locations compared to those who ingested these items several times per week.
Dr. Tran has been awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA).
“We’ve long known eating too much refined sugar and saturated fat brings the risk of obesity, metabolic and cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers. We also know these unhealthy eating habits hasten the onset of age-related cognitive decline in middle age and older adults.
Dr. Tran indicated that this research provides evidence that diet is crucial for brain health during early adulthood, a phase when cognitive function is typically preserved.
He also pointed out that the sample group utilized in this research was not representative of the broader community; yet, the findings remain applicable on a larger scale.
“It’s likely our participants were a little healthier than the general population and we think, if our sample better represented the public, the impact of diet on spatial navigation would likely be even more pronounced.”
