You Can Not Eat Just 1. Ultra-Processed Food Rewires Your Brain.
Photo: Denny Müller, Unsplash
What If Ultra-Processed Foods Are A Nutritional Neutron-Bomb?:
Nietzsche famously once said, “If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
Pretty profound stuff, even for “the world’s first psychologist”. (except for Aristotle and a few 1,000 others)
But Ole’ Fred turns out to be right, even when it concerns addicts.
Because the high-powered substances they use do change your brain for a pretty long time.
Weirdly-enough, it may not be just the people engaging in lab-grade neurochemistry who are in trouble.
Because a Nolan Ryan-fastball-grade study out of McGill and Helsinki suggests at least half of us are on the edge of similar trouble…
The Short Answer:
- Illegal substances aren’t the only thing that can change your brain.
- Nutrition can, too.
- So, “You Are What You Eat” might not be BS.
- A McGill/Helsinki team studied 33,000+ subjects, aged ~64.
- MRI results show UPF consumption changed at least 4 brain regions.
- These correspond to: 1) Hunger & Metabolism, 2) Reward, 3) Movement & Motion-Planning, 4) Fear.
- Those regions also control cravings & consumption.
- UPFs are addictive because of Fat, Salt & Sugar.
- But researchers think the additives in them might be even worse.
- The brain changes show up as inflammation or loss of cells.
- The reduced control, and fattening-ingredients might cause a Fat/Inflammation Spiral.
- Subjects with high UPF consumption also had worse blood-sugar and cholesterol.
- Some groups already get more than 50% of their calories from these types of foods.
- The good news is you can start lowering your risks, even by small reductions like 10% and tapering-off over time.
Read on to find out the details…
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So a lot of standard advice tends to get swept aside.
It gets recycled, or delivered like a platitude, or by some plonker like Uncle Larry, and people just dismiss it.
But what if the basic idea is still good?
You are what you eat!
Well the Saturday Morning Cartoon version of the last one used to be, “Don’t be a junk-food junkie!”
-And those guys couldn’t be more right! So hold on, dietary adrenaline-seekers!
So a combo team from U.Helsinki and McGill tried to suss out a few more problems with Ultra-Processed-Foods.
What they found was pretty disturbing!
In a study of over 33,000 subjects, aged 64 avg., from the UK Biobank who filled out questionnaires and got MRIs,
They found that consumption of UPFs actually changes regions in your brain!
-BOOM!
These include [Nerd Alert!]:
1) The Hunger & Metabolism Center
2) The Reward Center
3) Movement & Motion-Planning
4) The Fear Center
The problem with changes in these areas is that they all correspond in some way to the control of cravings.
It seems to work a bit like CBT. Change the thoughts -> change the behaviors; or vice-versa.
The big problem with this is that we all know UPFs are terrible for us.
They’re already implicated in increasing cases of Diabetes, Heart Disease, Brain circulation problems, and Dementia.
And who can blame them for creating this effect?
To keep selling, they’re chock-full of the standard Evolutionary craving-targets of sugar, fat, and salt.
BUT, they’re also full of wacky additives that might be pretty bad or even worse.
And there is one really key point. The study authors themselves speculate that,
“Changes in the brain may also be explained by the ingredients, emulsifiers and other additives used…”
So along with the 1,000s of chemicals we use that haven’t been fully-tested,
Who knows what those things are really doing to people?
The change in the four brain regions showed up on MRIs as either a worrying loss of brain-cell density, or an increase in inflammation.
And just like a substance addiction, all of these changes can make the problem worse.
Because the other key point is: They add-up to someone who eats UPFs being less able to resist eating even more.
-That could create a spiral, just like The Inflammation Spiral.
Maybe that’s part of why ~74% of Americans are either overweight or obese?
And just like case with some Depression, a lot of the increased inflammation for study subjects made it into the brain.
Appropriately enough, The Inflammation Spiral basically goes like this: Inflammation -> Migrates To Brain -> Anxiety &/or Depression -> Eat/Drink High-Glycemic Carbs -> Blood-Sugar Skyrockets -> Serotonin Goes Up -> You Feel Better -> Excess Blood-Sugar Stored As Fat -> Increased Body-Fat Puts Out More Hormones -> Inflammation Goes Up -> Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
But UPF consumption is so weird for your body, the team even found that the MRI brain changes also happened independent of weight [fat] gain!
As part of that “bonus round” subjects also got:
1) Worse blood-sugar levels
2) Worse cholesterol levels
That’s pretty scary because even in the UK data used, more than 50% of subjects’ daily calories came from UPFs.
But the Good News to wrap this up is health-risks can also start dropping fast once you reduce UPFs.
Dementia risk goes down as fast as 19% less for every 10% reduction in UPFs.
So you absolutely CAN get yourself healthy by throwing that junk-food in the trash and out of your diet!
You just have to put together the willpower to just taper it off one baby-step at a time; which is how most change works.
Godspeed, newly-unprocessed nutrition peeps!
• Source: U. Helsinki
• More Coverage: HT-Sugary Junk Food Has No “Off Switch”!
• Source Study: NPJ-Met.Hlth.Dis. – Ultra-processed food consumption affects structural integrity of feeding-related brain regions independent of and via adiposity
