French fries and Co. make you forgetful

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Fat is not just fat. Trans fats are particularly tricky: they damage the memory. This means that fried foods, fast food, ice cream or biscuits are not often on the menu. This was particularly evident in young men.

Trans fats have a negative effect on health, such as the cardiovascular system. The unsaturated fatty acids that are formed when vegetable oils are hardened increase the blood levels for bad cholesterol - LDL cholesterol. This leads to increased deposits in the blood vessels. In addition, the trans fats increase inflammatory processes in the body.

One forgotten word per gram

Beatrice Golom and Alexis Bui from the University of California wanted to know more about whether this also has a negative impact on memory. To do this, they evaluated the data from 1,018 healthy volunteers, which were collected over a period of six years. The amount of trans fats that the test subjects ate was determined in grams per day. The participants also took a memory test: They were shown words and had to recognize whether they were new or were being presented again.

For men under 45 years of age, the scientists found a clear connection: Those who often ate French fries and the like had a poorer memory. For every gram of trans fats ingested daily, the test subjects were able to remember an average of 0.76 fewer words.

Trans fats are not "safe"

The negative effect of trans fats was also retained when various influencing factors such as blood pressure, body mass index or insulin values ​​were excluded from the data analysis. Older men consumed fewer trans fats overall. The scientists suspect that this is why they did not find any effect of trans fats on memory performance. The proportion of female study participants was too low for the data evaluation.

“Our results show that trans fats damage memory. And that in the highly productive age, in other words for adults under 45 years of age, ”say the researchers. They therefore advocate that trans fats are no longer classified as "safe", as has been the case up to now. (away)

Source: Golomb B. A. and Bui A.K. et al .: A fat to forget: Trans fat consumption and memory, PLOS One, June 17, 2015.

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