When considering risk factors associated with serious chronic diseases, we often think about health indicators such as cholesterol, blood pressure, and body weight. But poor diet and physical inactivity also each increase the risk of heart disease and have a role to play in the development of some cancers. Perhaps worse, the (26)_____ effects of an unhealthy diet and insufficient exercise are not limited to your body. Recent research has also shown that (27)_____ in a high-fat and high-sugar diet may have negative effects on your brain, causing learning and memory (28)_____.
Studies have found obesity is associated with impairments in cognitive functioning, as (29)_____ by a range of learning and memory tests, such as the ability to remember a list of words presented some minutes or hours earlier. There is also a growing body of evidence that diet-induced cognitive impairments can emerge (30)_____—within weeks or even days. For example, one study found healthy adults (31)_____ to a high-fat diet for five days showed impaired attention, memory, and mood compared with a low-fat diet control group. Another study also found eating a high-fat and high-sugar breakfast each day for as little as four days resulted in problems with learning and memory (32)_____ to those observed in overweight and obese individuals.
Body weight was not hugely different between the groups eating a healthy diet and those on high fat and sugar diets. So this shows negative (33)_____ of poor dietary intake can occur even when body weight has not changed (34)_____. Thus, body weight is not always the best indicator of health and a thin person still needs to eat well and exercise (35)_____.
