Is Junk Food Really Bad for Your Brain?

That late-night binge of pizza and gummy worms might be doing more than just wrecking your waistline—it could be frying your brain. That’s right, those snacks could he directly impacting specific functions you use every day.

In a new study out of the University of Sydney, researchers basically confirmed what every junk food lover has long suspected but lacked the mental acuity to fully comprehend: a diet packed with sugar and fat isn’t just bad for your arteries, it’s also sneakily damaging your memory and sense of direction.

Using what we can now probably call vintage Oculus Rift VR headsets, a brand of virtual reality headset that was discontinued in 2021, psychology researcher Dominic Tran and his team ran college students, mostly psychology majors, through a digital brain teaser that put their spatial navigation and memories to the test.

Junk Food Might Be Turning Your Brain Into Goo, Study Finds

Before that, participants were quizzed on their junk food habits. They had their BMIs logged, and then they were thrown into the VR labyrinth where they had to find a treasure chest using landmarks as they navigated a digital maze, like so many lab mice before them.

They had two minutes to find the treasure. If they succeeded, they moved on to the next level. If they failed, they were instantly transported to the treasure chest and had only 10 seconds to memorize their surroundings. That way, they could more easily make their way back when they restarted the maze.

The final test involved navigating the maze without the treasure chest present, navigating solely by memory. The students who were more inclined to eat junk food struggled to remember anything. Those with healthier diets fared better.

There are some interesting side notes regarding the study that I feel should be mentioned. The first is that the team knew that virtual reality motion sickness would be an issue going into it, so they tried to recruit enough participants, knowing some people would be too motion-sick to continue the trial.

And that’s exactly what happened. Upwards of 65 out of 100+ participants were unable to complete some or all portions of the maze, which goes to show that virtual reality has some major hurdles to overcome before it can achieve the ubiquity its investors wish it could.

Second, Tran takes a second to keep a little bit of flattery on the participants by suggesting that psych students in general are simply too healthy. If they’re flubbing memory tests from just a year of sugar abuse, imagine what’s happening inside the average American adult.

Tran had previously conducted similar studies on mice with similar results: your diet, even in young adulthood, when your body can function at near peak on any garbage you throw in it, might already be steamrolling your brain into early decline.