Eating junk food could be making you lazy
We are well aware that junk food isn’t nutritionally viable in our diet, yet it still manages to draw us in, but new research shows that it can actually make you more sedentary and lazy.
It’s hardly shocking news we know, but it’s still important to take note of.
What is more shocking is the energy-draining effects of junk food can persist even when you’ve switched to a healthy eating plan.
The study, conducted on two groups of female rats, found that those who ate junk food – high in sugar and low in nutrients – gained more weight than the other group who stuck to a diet of unprocessed foods like corn and fish. What’s more the group eating junk food also suffered from fatigue and became more sedentary and less motivated.
Researchers from the University of Los Angeles found that at the end of the six month trial they switched the rats back to a nutritious diet for nine days but it didn’t seem to affect their weight gain or laziness levels.
Suggesting that fad diets that last a week or two are going to have no real health benefit.
‘Overweight people often get stigmatized as lazy and lacking discipline,’ says Blaisdell to the Mail Online, a professor of psychology at UCLA and author of the research which will be published in the journal Physiology and Behavior.
‘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.’
Tagged in Diet