Could the Junk Food Diet make you Lazy?

Diet and exercise play a critical role in our overall health, particularly when it comes to whether or not we're slugging around some extra weight. A recent study examines the relationship between poor diet and lifestyle choices--showing how those who are overweight may lead sedentary lifestyles and not the other way around.

According to researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), they studied 32 female rats who were divided into two diet groups for six months. The first group was given a standard diet that included unprocessed foods including ground corn and fishmeal. The other diet consisted of many processed foods that included lots of sugar and highly processed items, or what the authors referred to as the "junk food diet."

The rats were studied for three months, at which time the researchers discovered that the junk food diet made rats significantly heavier than the rats on the standard diet. Rats were also required to undergo a performance test that involved pressing a lever for food or water. Researchers found that the heavier rats had impaired performance while the others did not.

However, even at a six month point when the groups were switched, the overweight rats now on the standard diet did not lose weight. On a similar note, the healthier rates on the junk food diet did not gain weight or lose skills required for performance on the lever tests. Thus, researchers concluded that eating junk food over a prolonged period of time could negatively affect both weight and mental ability, as seen in the original junk food diet group. 

"Overweight people often get stigmatized as lazy and lacking discipline," said UCLA researcher, Aaron Blaisdell via Medical Xpress. "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. Either the highly processed diet causes fatigue or the diet causes obesity, which causes fatigue."

More information regarding the findings can be seen via the journal, Physiology and Behavior.