Eating too much junk food may not only lead to obesity, but also may make eater mentally slower or less motivated, according to a study in the media reports Thursday.
Researchers at UCLA placed rats, whose physiological systems are very similar to those of humans, in two groups: The healthy diet group and the unhealthy diet group.
After three months, researchers found the rats on junk food were not only more overweight than the rats on the healthy diet, but they were also less motivated. Researchers indicated that a poor diet had an impact on their brain.
In the performance tests, the obese rats were slower to react to the tasks and took about a 10 minute break between each task, while the lean rats would only need 5 minutes.
Another finding from the study shows that the obese rats had a large number of tumors in their bodies, whereas those on the nutritious diet had fewer, smaller tumors.
“Overweight people often get stigmatized as lazy and lacking discipline,” Aaron Blaisdell, a professor of the psychology at UCLA’s Brain Research Institute and lead research on the study, said.
“We interpret our results as suggesting that the idea commonly portrayed in the media that people become fat because they are lazy is wrong. Our data suggest that diet-induced obesity is a cause, rather than an effect, of laziness. Either the highly processed diet causes fatigue or the diet causes obesity, which causes fatigue.”
