A new study found out that middle-aged men who regularly consume trans fat are at risk of having worse memory during their productive years. The study is the first to link the ingredient to impaired memory.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine provided, through their findings, another reason why trans fat should be removed from food products. The study involved 1,018 participants who completed a survey to measure their trans fat consumption. They also took a memory test about word recall.
The analysis showed that men aged 45 and younger recalled 86 words, but this number is reduced by 0.76 words for every gram of trans fat added on their diet. Men with the highest trans fat consumption have 14 percent poorer memory compared to those engaged on a zero trans fat diet.
The results remained the same even after factoring age, exercise, education, race, and mood.
"Trans fats were most strongly linked to worse memory in men during their high productivity years," Beatrice A. Golomb, study lead author and professor of medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine, said in a university news release. "Trans fat consumption has previously shown adverse associations to behavior and mood-other pillars of brain function. However, to our knowledge a relation to memory or cognition had not been shown."
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently ordered food manufacturers to remove artificial trans fat from their products. The agency ruled that the ingredient is not safe for human use because it increases one's risk of coronary heart disease, which leads to thousands of fatal heart attacks each year. The companies were given three years, or until 2018, to reformulate their products. Trans fat is a common ingredient on food products because it is cheap and increases the product's shelf life, stability, and texture.
The results were published in the June 17 issue of the journal PLOS One.
