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A new study has found that being overweight and consistently eating processed food can lead to feelings of tiredness and inactivity.
Researchers from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) conducted a rat study — they placed the rats into two groups and fed the 32 female rates one of two diets for six months. The first group rate a normal rat’s diet of unprocessed foods like fish meal and ground corn. The second group was fed a diet of processed foods and high sugar. After three months, researchers found that the rats on the junk food diet became obese, while the other group did not.
They then had the rats press down on a lever. When they did so successfully, they were rewarded with food or water. The rats on the junk food diet took much longer breaks during the task.
After a period of six months, the researchers switched the rats’ diets. Those who were previously being fed junk food were now eating more nutritiously for nine days. However, there was no improvement in the obese rats’ weight, and their responses to the lever task remained the same. When the lean rats ate junk food for nine days, there were no noticeable changes.
The findings suggest that a long-term pattern of eating junk food will lead to obesity and cognitive impairments.
“Overweight people often get stigmatized as lazy and lacking discipline. 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,” said Aaron Blaisdell, lead researcher. He notes that the junk food diet can cause fatigue, or it causes obesity which leads to fatigue.
(By Marissa Brassfield for CalorieLab)
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