Early exposure to a "western diet" impairs memory function. Uh oh.

Yes, it's been more than two weeks since I last posted. I've had plenty to keep me busy; I'm not just running out of gas.  I hear from some of you who worry about me.  But I'm OK.

I came across some recent research with implications for the diets of children and later memory loss.  But there's no real news.  Saturated fats, refined sugar, refined flour, and otherwise processed foods are still bad.  Very bad.  What's new in this research is that the negative effects begin with children when they are on what they referred to as a "western diet."  You know, pizza, red meat, fast food, and other processed foods.  (According to the late Dr. Martha Clare Morris, in her book Diet for the Mind, pizza seems to be the very worst thing for your brain that you can take in...)

The research was published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.  The article was "Western diet consumption impairs memory function via dysregulated hippocampus acetylcholine signaling."  The researchers claimed to find causes and effects in several areas we've discussed before, both in Beating the Dementia Monster and in this blog.  For example, the western diet is hard on the gut microbiome that has such an important regulatory function for the brain.  Also, the western diet disrupts processes in the hippocampus that are so vital to memory.

Now, to be fair to McDonald's, the research was conducted with rats, not people.  And we've discussed before how brain research results from rodent models applied to people has sometimes been discredited.  In this case, the researchers wanted to know what would happen if rats ate a western diet during their juvenile stage of development, 26 to 56 days after their birth.  The rats were fed cafeteria-style, giving them the opportunity to choose whatever (junk) food they wanted.

I'm thinking this age may correspond, in people years, to when I began to earn enough money to begin eating fast food on my own.  Fast food became my regular diet at a fairly young age.  So maybe diet in my juvenile years has something to do with why I'm where I'm at today.  But I'm confident that generally following the MIND diet over the past seven or eight years has contributed to my present well-being.