Fast food found to cause Alzheimer-like brain conditions

By April MacIntyre Nov 28, 2008, 20:25 GMT

The McDonald\'s logo at fast food restaurant in London, Britain, Lab mice fed fast-food for nine months showed signs of developing abnormal brain tangles strongly associated with Alzheimer\'s disease. EPA/ANDY RAIN

If you needed another reason to avoid eating junk and fast food, a Swedish researcher has delivered a new finding, that bad food makes for bad brains.

Lab mice fed fast-food for nine months showed signs of developing abnormal brain tangles strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease.

These determinations were released in a series of published papers by a researcher at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, show how a diet rich in fat, sugar and cholesterol could increase the risk of the most common type of dementia.

"On examining the brains of these mice, we found a chemical change not unlike that found in the Alzheimer brain," Susanne Akterin, a researcher at the Karolinska Institutet's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, who led the study, said in a statement.

"We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors ... can adversely affect several brain substances, which can be a contributory factor in the development of Alzheimer's."

The disease is currently incurable and is the most common form of dementia among older people. It affects the regions of the brain involving thought, memory and language.  While the most advanced drugs destroy beta amyloid protein plaques in the brain, researchers now look to address the toxic tangles caused by an abnormal build-up of the protein tau.

"All in all, the results give some indication of how Alzheimer's can be prevented, but more research in this field needs to be done before proper advice can be passed on to the general public," she said.

In 2004, documentarian and television series producer Morgan Spurlock directed and starred in "Super Size Me," where he ate nothing but three McDonald's meals a day every day for 30 consecutive days. 

During his ordeal, he became overweight and suffered terribly from acute depression which lasted even as he was detoxing from the fat-laden junk food diet.