Trans Fats Proven Bad for People in Mazes

Trans fat is linked to weak intellect (snippet):

Research on mice points to role of diet in memory; Type of fat common in fast food By David Kohn - Sun Staff - Originally published October 26, 2004 SAN DIEGO - As if eating badly and being overweight weren't already harmful enough, research announced yesterday suggests that consuming too much of several kinds of fat can damage memory and intellect. With about a third of the U.S. population either overweight or obese, the results could have broad significance for the national IQ. "We are in the midst of an obesity epidemic in the United States," said Dr. Barry Levin, of the VA Medical Center in East Orange, N.J. "These studies show that diets high in fat are a risk factor for not only heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes, but for cognitive decline as well." All of the studies, which were announced at the annual conference of the Society for Neuroscience, involved animals. But scientists agreed that the results almost certainly applied to humans as well. "After I did this study, I didn't eat french fries anymore," said neuroscientist Lotta Granholm, who found that trans fats - the sort found in many fast foods - impaired memory and learning in middle-age rats. Many recent studies have linked trans fat to heart disease and cancer, but Granholm's research is the first to connect it to problems with learning and memory. "It's an important study. There's a real impact on the brain," said University of South Florida-Tampa neuroscientist Paula Bickford, an expert on the how food affects cognition. Last year, Granholm fed one group of rats a diet that contained 10 percent hydrogenated coconut oil, a common trans fat. She gave another group the same diet, but replaced the coconut oil with soybean oil, which is not a trans fat. After six weeks, the animals were tested in a series of mazes. The coconut oil group made far more errors, especially on the tests that required more mental energy. "The trans fats made memory significantly worse," said Granholm, who is director of the Center On Aging at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. The quantity of trans fat fed to the rats was equivalent to amounts consumed by many Americans. "It was not more than what people would eat," said Granholm, who also noted that the rats in her study were not overweight. This indicates that the cognitive problems were not related to obesity, but to consumption of trans fat. "You don't have to be overweight to be affected by this," she said. ....Over the past two decades, trans fat has become ubiquitous in this country. It's used in many crackers, cookies, doughnuts, cakes and breads, as well as many fast foods, which are often fried in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, a common trans fat. The fats, which are made by adding hydrogen to vegetable oil under high pressure, appeal to manufacturers and restaurants because they extend shelf life and remain solid at room temperature, as saturated fats do. In response to recent research, and efforts by consumer groups, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration earlier this year decided that starting in 2006, products that contain trans fats must say so on the label. Granholm said trans fat seems to produce its effect on the brain by destroying proteins that help neurons send and receive signals. In animals that ate coconut oil, these molecules, known as microtubule-associated proteins, were much less common. Granholm suspects that trans fat increases inflammation in the brain, which damages the proteins....