Center for Nutritional Psychology
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CNP featured research. This is your diet mental health. Break two minutes to learn and be good to yourself. Can a junk food diet change your brain in only one week? Let's find out. Researchers have been zeroing in on whether high fat, high sugar foods can impact our brain and influence are eating choices. Evidence is mounting that it can and that the hippocampus, a major structure within our brain, is one of its favorite targets. The hippocampus is the part of our brain that helps us to learn, remember and control our appetite. What do you learning and memory have to do with controlling our appetite? Dr. Richard Stephenson and his team designed a line of research studies toe Answer this question. This study included 102 healthy university age participants, all of whom regularly ate a balanced diet. In this experiment, half of the group ate their regular balanced diet, while the other half included several portions of junk food each day as well. At the end of the week, the subjects hippocampal functioning was tested to see whether the junk food addition to their diet changed their desire for mawr of thes foods at the end of the week, the subjects hippocampal functioning was tested to see whether the junk food addition to their diet changed their desire for more of thes foods for the junk food group. Results showed that eating just one week of added junk food resulted in changes in their hippocampal functioning, and that these changes significantly reduced this group's ability to control their appetite. This group's desire to eat more junk food was so revved up that they continued to eat even after they were full. When we eat Western style foods, foods high in processed fats and sugars, the high sensory experience of anticipation, pleasure and reward is encoded into our memory by our hippocampus. This memory then influences its ability to regulate our eating and influences what we like and want to eat. It sets us up on a path toe want and like more highly stimulating junky foods and make it harder for us to stop eating them even when we're full. So what now? Well, we now know that our hippocampus guides our future eating choices and that are eating choices in turn guide what we feel, want and experience that is nutritional psychology. Our question is, how will you treat your hippocampus today? Learn and be good to yourself. This diet mental health break is brought to you by the center of nutritional psychology CNP.