Scientect

Source: Science Alert. By Russell McLendon.

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Our love of sugar once helped our foraging ancestors get more bang for their buck from rare, high-energy foods.

Today, it drives us back to the store at 10pm to satisfy a cheeky chocolate craving.

We do this even though we know many of the physical and metabolic risks of excess sugar, such as obesity, diabetes, tooth decay, and even memory impairment.

But how well can we undo the damage by changing our diets?

According to a new systematic review and meta-analysis, it is possible to reverse cognitive effects of a sugary diet in rodents – but perhaps only partially.

Some impairments persist even after adopting healthier eating habits.

Reducing sugar intake can improve memory in rodents previously fed high-sugar diets, the study found, but it doesn’t restore memory to the level of peers consistently fed healthy diets.

Previous research has linked high-fat, high-sugar (HFHS) diets with an array of neurocognitive and behavioral effects, but it remains unclear how persistent those effects are if diet improves.

For the new study, researchers analyzed results from 27 preclinical studies involving controlled experiments on rats and mice, hoping to illuminate how shifting from HFHS diets to healthier food affects cognition.

“Our results show that improving diet quality does benefit memory,” says lead author Simone Rehn, a biopsychologist at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in Australia.

“But those improvements were incomplete. Even after weeks on a healthy diet, memory did not return to the level seen in animals that had never eaten an unhealthy diet.” Read More.