Eating Junk, Unhealthy Food Leads to Memory Loss: Study

Health experts have time and again warned that eating junk food is harmful to health. A latest study added another side-effect of unhealthy diet on the already long list. It states that consuming unhealthy food could affect memory.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales conducted a research on group of rats. They placed the rats on different diets such as low-fat food with sugar water, low-fat food with water, cafeteria food with water and cafeteria food with sugar water.

"Interestingly, our rats were not obese and these changes emerged at day five," research co-author Professor Margaret Morris told AAP. "So you don't have to be obese, you just have to eat poorly."

The study results showed that rats on a diet rich in fat and sugar had weakened memories after almost a week. The rats were found to be lacking an ability to notice when an object was moved to another location.

Moreover, the researchers found that the memory damage was not reversed after the rats were put on healthy diets.

"The animals of course weren't obese after just six days on the diet. So the changes in cognition, the loss of memory, happened well before there was any weight change," she told  ABC News Australia.

Morris stated although people wanted to remain thin due to societal pressure, they ended up eating junk. "It suggests you don't need to be eating high fat to get it, you can be eating high sugar," she said. "The rats with the biggest inflammation of the hippocampus had the biggest memory loss."

The research was published in the journal Brain, Behaviour and Immunity.