14 DAY TRIAL // A team of researchers led by specialists at the Louisiana State University in the US believe to have found evidence that pizza, hamburgers and other high-fat foods have a negative effect not just on people's waistline but also on their brain.
More precisely, these scientists claim that evidence at hand indicates that high-fat foods cause the human brain to swell up and, in doing so, up the risk of memory impairment and even psychiatric disorders like anxiety, depression and repetitive behaviors.
Researching how high-fat foods affect the brain
In a report in the science journal Biological Psychiatry, the researchers explain that, looking to reach a better understanding of how high-fat foods affect the brain and consequently the behavior and mental health, they carried out a series of experiments on laboratory mice.
Knowing that high-fat foods transform the population of bacteria in the guts of all living creatures, the scientists started by collecting such microorganisms from the entrails of rodents kept on a high-fat diet for a considerable period of time.
They then introduced these microorganisms into the body of non-obese adult mice kept on a normal diet and closely monitored the rodents to see how their brand new lab-made population of gut bacteria influenced their behavioral patterns and overall health condition.
It was discovered that, having been transplanted gut bacteria from specimens kept on a high-fat diet, the non-obese mice started showing signs of anxiety, depression, impaired memory, and even repetitive behaviors. What's more, inflammation was identified in their body and especially in their brain.
The Louisiana State University specialists and their colleagues theorize that it was the inflammation in their brain that they experienced after having received gut bacteria from mice kept on a high-fat diet that took its toll on the rodent's mental health.
The findings are probably true for humans as well
The researchers suspect that their findings also hold true for humans. Thus, they argue that, by altering a person's population of gut bacteria, high-fat foods likely make them more susceptible to brain inflammation and mental health issues. Still, further studies are needed to confirm this.
“This paper suggests that high-fat diets impair brain health, in part, by disrupting the symbiotic relationship between humans and the microorganisms that occupy our gastrointestinal tracks,” specialist John Krystal said in a statement.