Sweet teen memories

All that glitters is not gold and all that’s sweet is not wonderful. At some time in our evolutionary past sugar’s sweet taste denoted some valuable kilojoules that could be consumed but we don’t need to ingest every energy dense food we come across anymore…in fact too much of our food is energy-dense and nutrition-light. Still, processed food is based around sugar and fat, capitalising on our evolutionary drive to eat these foods whenever they arise, and so many people these days are consuming too much of both. The health implications of this sweetly fatty way of eating are many and now a new study has shown that when teenagers eat too much sugar it might be bad for their brain and their memory.

In the study adolescent rats were given drinks high in sugar or “high fructose corn syrup” (HFCS – the sweetener used in many soft drinks and processed foods). The rats were then tested in mazes that measured their spatial memory ability. It emerged that adolescent rats that consumed the sweet drinks, especially those using HFCS, performed worse on memory tests than any other group. The study also found that those adolescent rats had high levels of brain inflammation especially in the hippocampus, a part of the temporal lobe that controls memory formation. These brain and memory problems did not occur in a group of rats drinking water or in adult rats given the sweet drinks.

This is not the first study to show a link between sugar and brain health. A study in the journal Neuron for instance, showed that high blood sugar levels are associated with shrinkage in brain areas including the hippocampus. So too much sugar in your blood, whether it be from sugar itself or HFCS, is not good for your brain and this study suggests that adolescents, who are often the targeted market for sweet beverages and other sweet foods, are just as vulnerable as anyone else to excess sugar’s predations.

Sixteen should not be sweet after all if you want to maintain your memories.