If your child prefers high-fat snacks such as hamburgers or fries, parents should be aware. Because recent studies suggest that eating a high fat diet for a week can lead to ADHD or hyperactivity and decrease a child's learning abilities, irrespective of the child's weight.
Researchers speculate that excessive fat intake alter the body's mechanisms to metabolize dopamine or chemical compound that plays a key role in regulating mood or mood.
In detail, a team of researchers from the University of Illinois, U.S. found that rats fed a high fat diet (60 percent) have a very different behavior of rats fed a low-fat diet (10 percent). Though Western-style diet such as hamburger or fast food usually contains fat by 35-45 percent and is bustling foods consumed by children today.
"We found that a high-fat diet can affect the metabolism of dopamine in the brains of mice by triggering behaviors very quickly so full of anxiety and learning difficulties," said Gregory Freund researchers from the Division of Nutritional Sciences, University of Illinois.
"Changes in dopamine metabolism in the brain is also found in patients with ADHD and those who are overweight or obese. Increase in the number of dopamine are metabolized was associated with anxiety behavior in children," he added.
According to Freund, after a week of being fed a high fat diet, although researchers did not notice any weight gain, the behavior of the rats in the first group seemed to change. Rats appear more often, scratching or digging and playing with wheels, including reluctant to explore open space.
In addition, the rats in the first group also showed decreased memory and learning ability. This is seen when the rats has difficulty tracing and studying the patterns of the maze and object recognition disorders.
"But when the diet is changed or reduced fat, memory mice were recovered in just over a week," Freund wrote as quoted by the Daily Mail, Thursday (02/28/2013).
Although researchers say the effect can last longer if similar conditions occur in children, this study also found that a high fat diet can lead to anxiety and memory disorders only in children who are vulnerable experience, mainly because of genetic or environmental influences.