We all know that indulging in too many fatty foods is bad for your general state of health and wellbeing, but can they really affect your cognitive abilities as well?

New research conducted by Oxford University and funded by the British Heart Foundation has found that not only can eating a high-fat diet reduce your physical capabilities, but also your mental ones.

The study involved putting a set of rats on two different diets – one high-fat and one low-fat. After nine days the rats on a high-fat diet were only able to run 50% as far on a treadmill as their healthier counterparts.  They were also making mistakes more quickly in a maze task, suggesting that their mental abilities had been affected.

Dr Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health had this to say on the matter:

'A high-fat diet sends a message to the brain that it's a time of plenty, so the neurotransmitters - brain chemicals - tell us that we don't have to be quite so frenetic about finding food,' he says. 'Our hunter-gatherer instinct is switched off, or at least put on hold.'

What do you think on the matter? Will this research be a wake-up call to those who ignore the warnings about high-fat diets? Tell us here.

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