It’s been researched: eating McDonald’s makes you dumber

Man, every now and then I can really enjoy a deliciously crispy nugget from Maccie. As I’m typing this, I immediately feel like opening my UberEats app. Naturally, I eat those nuggets with a medium portion of French fries and a vanilla milkshake, because that’s been my regular order for years. But besides the fact that I don’t need to explain to you that it can make you extremely overweight, there’s more bad news. Colleague Ella from Amayzine discovered that fast food doesn’t just affect our bodies, but our brains too. I’m sorry to have to share this with you, but it actually makes us dumber. How depressing.

Is that really true? Yes, a study by the University of Portland has even demonstrated this. The scientists researched brain ageing in elderly people and discovered that fast food can make our brains shrink. Pff, that gives me quite a scare, I have to say. I’m immediately wondering how much my own brain has already shrunk.

But how is that possible?

There’s actually a pretty logical explanation, which I hadn’t thought of myself until now. It goes like this: people who often eat fast food naturally consume a lot of saturated fats. Besides the fact that these fats are bad for the blood flow to your brain, they also contain very few vitamins B, C, D and E. As a result, the brain shrinks, just as it does with Alzheimer’s disease.

Neurologist Gene Bowman, the leader of the study, explains that people who do consume a lot of vitamins and Omega-3 fats (and therefore avoid Maccie) have a relatively large brain. In other words: visits to McDonald’s do anything but make us smarter.

All right, of course it depends on how much fast food you eat, and there isn’t much information about that available yet. So for now, let’s just assume that an occasional Happy Meal won’t do any harm.

Read also:

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• Research shows that eating avocado is incredibly healthy
• Research reveals which is less healthy: supermarket pizza or pizza from a chain