High fructose corn syrup slows your memory to a crawl

After you eat foods with high fructose corn syrup, your brain slows down.

That’s what scientists at UCLA found.

Researchers trained regular rats for five days and taught them how to escape a maze.

Then the animals were randomly assigned either to one group fed plain water, or another fed an amount of concentrated fructose similar to the typical amount a human gets from foods and drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup.

A week later, the rats were anesthetized and underwent a brief pulse of fluid to simulate brain trauma. They continued to be fed the diets for another six weeks, and then the researchers retested their ability to recall the route and escape the maze.

The bottom line? Animals on the fructose diet took 30 percent longer to remember and find the exit compared to those who drank plain water.

“Our findings suggest that fructose disrupts plasticity — the creation of fresh pathways between brain cells that occurs when we learn or experience something new,” said Gomez-Pinilla, a member of the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center. “That’s a huge obstacle for anyone to overcome…”

Imagine your brain slowing down by 30%? No thank you.

Of course, the best thing to do is to avoid high fructose corn syrup, or HFCS. But this is not exactly easy because everywhere… the average American consumed eight teaspoons per day last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

And the manufacturers have hidden it. Ingredients formally labeled as HFCS now aren’t. 90% or less fructose is now called just fructose or fructose syrup.

HFCS is also called concentrated fruit juice, crystalline fructose, glucose-fructose or even maize syrup.