"High-Fat Diet May Make You Stupid and Lazy"

From the No, REALLY?! files of science/ livescience.com


Scientists have shown that high fat diets may result in lower cognitive abilities and more difficulty exercising. For 10 days, rats were either given a high fat diet (55% calories as fat) or a low fat diet (7.5% calories as a fat). The findings were as follows:

• After 4 days, fatty rat muscles had difficulty utilizing oxygen, as much as 4x less. This made their hearts have to work harder and increase in size.
• After 9 days, fat rats took longer to finish a maze and made more mistakes than the lean group.
• Build up of uncoupling protein 3 made them less efficient at using oxygen needed to make energy, ie they become lazier.

Although this seems like a big ole DUH, scientists say that this study shows the short term effects of high fat diets, in oppose to the long term consequences that have been drilled into our heads -- obesity, heart disease and diabetes. In other words, "While the finding may not seem a big surprise, the researcher say it might suggest that high-fat diets make humans lazy and stupid."