Health Effects
A study by Paul Johnson and Paul Kenny at the Scripps Research Institute (2008) suggested that junk food consumption alters brain activity in a manner similar to addictive drugs like cocaine or heroin. After many weeks with unlimited access to junk food, the pleasure centers of rat brains became desensitized, requiring more food for pleasure. After the junk food was taken away and replaced with a healthy diet, the rats starved for two weeks instead of eating nutritious fare. A 2007 British Journal of Nutrition study found that female rats who eat junk food during pregnancy increased the likelihood of unhealthy eating habits in their offspring.
A report published in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology suggests that babies of mothers with a high-sugar and high-fat diet while pregnant are more prone to junk food themselves. The study was conducted on rats and suggests that "infants whose mothers eat excessive amounts of high-fat, high-sugar junk foods when pregnant or breastfeeding are likely to have a greater preference for these foods later in life."
Read more about this topic: Junk Food
Famous quotes containing the words health and/or effects:
“As they move into sharing parenting, men often are apprentices to women because they are not yet as skilled in child care. Mothers have to be willing to teach fathers—both by stepping in and showing and by stepping back and letting them learn.”
—Nancy Press Hawley. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 6 (1978)
“The hippie is the scion of surplus value. The dropout can only claim sanctity in a society which offers something to be dropped out of—career, ambition, conspicuous consumption. The effects of hippie sanctimony can only be felt in the context of others who plunder his lifestyle for what they find good or profitable, a process known as rip-off by the hippie, who will not see how savagely he has pillaged intricate and demanding civilizations for his own parodic lifestyle.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)