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Food for thought为什么青少年无法抗拒垃圾食品?导读:你是否也知道垃圾食品不健康,但就是管不住嘴?科学家最新研究表明,垃圾食品不仅对身体不好,甚至会对大脑造成负面影响,造成记忆减退,认知能力下降,而且对青少年的影响尤为明显。
It’s harder for teenagers to resist junk food as their brains are still developing. TUCHONG It’s hard to turn down hamburgers, french fries, potato chips and all of the other junk food that seem to call out to us. However, eating too much junk food can harm your body, particularly if you’re between the ages of 10 and 19. “Junk food shapes adolescent brains in ways that impair their ability to think, learn and remember. It can also make it harder to control impulsive behaviors,” said Amy Reichelt, a brain and nutrition specialist at Western University, Canada. “It may even up a teen’s risk of depression and anxiety.” Reichelt and two other researchers reviewed more than 100 studies, including their own, about how poor food choices can impact adolescent brains. They found adolescents are more sensitive than any other age group to processed foods with a lot of fat and sugar as their brains are not yet fully formed. Adolescent brains are still developing the ability to assess risks and control actions. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that tells us we shouldn’t eat chips all the time and helps us resist that urge. However, this region is the last to mature – it doesn’t fully develop until we are in our early 20s. Meanwhile, teen brains get more buzz from rewards. The parts of the brain that make us feel good when we do something pleasurable – like eating tasty foods – are fully developed by the teen years. In fact, these regions are even more sensitive when we are young. That’s because dopamine, a natural chemical that lifts our mood when we experience something good, is especially active in adolescent brains. Therefore, the teen brain has two strikes against it when it comes to resisting junk food. “It has a heightened drive for rewards and reduced self-regulation,” said Reichelt. Reichelt and her team conducted their own study using mice, whose brains develop much like our own. They discovered that the “teenage” mice that had a high-fat diet performed worse on memory tests than those eating a normal diet. Researchers said the high-fat diet may make the mice’s prefrontal cortex work less effectively. So, what’s the best way to say no to junk food? Researchers suggest exercise. When we exercise, the brain’s reward system becomes less sensitive to food cues. Exercise also triggers the body to make a protein that helps brain cells grow and boosts connections between the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions. The prefrontal cortex thus can work better to help us make wise decisions and control our impulses.
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