High fat diet impairs memory and physical performance

By David Liu (davidl@foodconsumer.org)

High fat diet is known to cause health problems when used for a long period. But a study suggests fatty foods can also have adverse effects on memory and physical health when used for only a matter of a few days.

The British study published by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology found rats on a high fat diet for nine days performed worse than those on a low fat diet in maze and treadmill tests.

The results suggest that rats fed fatty foods somehow impaired their memory and physical performance.

Andrew Murray, a lecturer in physiology at Cambridge University and colleagues were cited as finding that high fat diets have similar effects on people, but those findings have not been published.