Researchers of a new study found that consuming excessive food leads to obesity, which in turn can make you lazy.
Up until now, researchers believed that a lazy and sedentary lifestyle leads to obesity. However, University of California - Los Angeles researchers have reason to believe that it's the other way around and junk food consumption has a big role to play in a sluggish lifestyle.
In a new study, the researchers placed 32 female rats on one of two diets for six months. Sixteent rats were fed a standard rat's diet comprising of non-processed food. The other 16 were given a diet of highly processed food with more fat and sugar.
After three months researchers noticed that the rats belonging to the second group had become considerably fatter. Later, the rats were given a task in which they were required to press a lever to receive a food or water reward. The rats on the junk food diet demonstrated impaired performance, taking substantially longer breaks than the lean rats before returning to the task. In a 30-minute session, the overweight rats took breaks that were nearly twice as long as the lean ones.
Six months later, the rats' diets were switched. The overweight rats were then placed on the standard diet and received additional nutrients for nine days following the switch. Researchers found that these nine days didn't help reduce their weight or improve their lever responses. Alternatively, placing the rats on a junk food diet for nine days also didn't increase their weight noticeably or result in any reduction in their motivation on the lever task.
"Overweight people often get stigmatized as lazy and lacking discipline," UCLA's Aaron Blaisdell said in a statement. "We interpret our results as suggesting that the idea commonly portrayed in the media that people become fat because they are lazy is wrong. Our data suggest that diet-induced obesity is a cause, rather than an effect, of laziness. Either the highly processed diet causes fatigue or the diet causes obesity, which causes fatigue."
The findings of this study also confirm that there are no quick fixes to weight problems.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and by entrepreneur Cameron Smith.
