Your Diet Is Making You Stupid, Stupid! ;)

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Good.
This article is divided into two parts. First, I explain how I arrived at understanding how food influences our mental state by pulling from a life story from over five years ago. The second part deals with the new researching showing fatty foods cause short-term memory loss. If you wish to skip this life story and head right to the explanation and science of fatty foods drop down below to the bold header: Fatty Foods Cause Short-Term Memory Loss

The Food Induced Confusion

Ever feel miserable from eating? Need to take a nap after that meal? Experience a surge of happiness or lethargy after pizza and soda? These are all the typical ups and downs I went through every day after each meal. I thought it was normal.

Then one day my mother told me it’s not.

At the time I have lived this way for ten years since puberty. It was part of my daily life for ten years! I lived with it every day. Telling me that my reaction to food was abnormal, well, it was if she told me that breathing wasn’t normal. I froze. I was shocked. I was like “really?”

She said it could be a food allergy. I never heard of such a thing.

And thus set in motion a quest to better understand my interaction with food.

After a while, oh say eight years of feeling listless, uncreative, and unwilling to do mental work after eating did seem to be out of place and abnormal. No one else seemed to have this problem. After eating one of my daily cheap two dollar Tony’s pizza with a sausage or peperoni topping all I felt like doing was lying down and napping hoping and wishing this mental fuzziness and complete inability to concentrate would quickly disappear so I could get on with my day. It always took about an hour or two before I could sit up and work again. The ability to do physical labor in most cases was not impacted however, if I could just concentrate and do something. But any mental exercise such as creative writing, chatting, or problem solving just wasn’t possible like it was moments before I ate the pizza.

This mental fog and following two hours of stupidity occurred after eating a variety of foods including instant mashed potatoes, sub’s, and who knows what else. For most of my life each meal was different but the reaction of an hour of stupidity remained constant.

Years of eating random meals left me unable to trace the cause of the problem. By eating a large Tony’s pizza daily for a year provided the stability I needed in my diet to study the effects of food on my health. After having enough mental numbing from eating this pizza that made me dumb I became positive that bread, cheese, or meat is causing this problem. Only years later do I realize there could be other factors at play but at the time my nutritional health info was limited to macro nutrients. At the time I was unaware that the flavoring MSG kills brain cells causing confusion and lack of concentration -basically brief stupidity. MSG may have been on the pizza. Read my article http://joegoldfarb.com/health/the-most-savory-of-poisons to understand more about MSG and health.

A few years later I ate chicken seasoned with a particular Mexican seasoning. Immediately after I would get brain drain. I didn’t think much of it figuring it was normal.

On my quest to improve my health I switched from meat to tofu two years ago. Again, I seasoned the tofu with the same seasoning I used on the chicken. Again, I experienced brain drain. It was here I realized what MSG is for, lucky me, it was printed in the ingredient list (which is rare). Note: I stopped eating tofu after three months and replaced it with boiled eggs which made me feel much better.

The other night I used a new spice on my food as an experiment. I used a lot. Perhaps a teaspoon. This brain fog happened again. I was made stupid for two hours. Totally put me out of commission. I lost my evening because of that spice. I felt awful.

It’s been years since I experienced this. This was common place years ago and I thought it was normal until I changed my diet. Then it disappeared.. until last night.

That seasoning must contain MSG. The last season I used that led me to discover MSG was a Mexican chicken flavoring. This seasoning is also from Mexico. I bought both in a common supermarket in the common spice and seasoning aisle.

Again, read my MSG article here to catch up.

Not aware at the time MSG caused my problem (realized or remembered the next day) I googled that night “food makes you stupid” and came across an interesting study. http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/abstract/fj.09-139691v1 about fatty foods.

Fatty Foods Cause Short-Term Memory Loss

cheese, burger and curly fries

We may already be familiar that bad diets impact our health over years, but a new study on rats showed that noticeable deteriorated physical and mental health can happen in ten days.

Here’s the scoop: rats fed a diet high in fat for ten days preformed poorly in exercise and had short-term memory loss. After just four days the rats muscles became inefficient at producing energy thus making the heart work harder – and increase in size. Nine days into the diet came the memory loss and mental errors while running mazes.

Verdict? The high-fat diet (55% of the calories came from fat) made the rats lazy and stupid.

A typical fast food meal has an average of 40-60 percent of its calories from fat. Do you eat fried fast food every day? Do your friends and family comment on your inability to remember what happened yesterday? Do you misplace your keys or other items? Forgot what you talked about with your friend on the phone the other day? Your diet may be to blame.

MSG kills neurons. High fat foods worsen short-term memory. Our brains respond to the food we eat. It’s time that we starting thinking about the muscle that matters most when it comes to the foods we eat. We don’t want to turn into mindless zombies, do we?

At a later date I’ll write more about how grains and diary negativity impacted my health, my well being and mental clarity. For example, I would often get a fuzzy face and head sensation after eating pasta, bread or any other food with grains. But right now the hard-hitting MSG triggered this article about the latest fatty food research and how foods impact out mental state.

To summarize, not only are some foods just stupid to eat, eating some foods make us stupid!

Here is a short list of foods that cause or are associated with memory loss:

MSG
Fatty foods
Fructose
Low levels of iodine
Low levels of zinc
Low levels of iron
Alcohol
Soy
Other toxins like pesticides
Low-carb diet

Each has their caveats of course that need to be explained rather than taken straight up. For example, one serving of soy wont cause problems. However, there is an association between eating soy daily and memory loss in the elderly. However, it needs to be clear that memory loss is brain damage. It’s either from the prevention of a neuro chemical to form new memories or more commonly the destruction of neuro connections that erase memory. Memory loss is easily testable and evident. Other areas of the brain that become damaged may be less obvious. So, in a later article I will go into detail how to maintain strong cognitive function while minimizing mental impairment using diet and foods. Till then be happy and live healthy!