Study: Diet contributes to laziness
By Elise Craig, Outside
A study out of UCLA suggests that eating a consistent diet of processed foods and carrying extra weight causes people to become tired and inactive—not the other way around. But on the upside, it indicates that a few processed food binges isn’t enough to impair our motivation.
Researchers fed 32 rats two different diets — one a normal diet of foods like ground corn and fish meal, the other a processed diet with ingredients like corn starch, sucrose, and soybean oil. After three months, the rats on the processed diet had grown obese; they also took much longer breaks during tasks than the leaner rats.
After six months, the rats switched diets for nine days. The obese rats’ weight and responses to tasks didn’t improve, but the leaner rats’ weight stayed about the same, and their responses to the tasks weren’t impaired.
