Men fare much worse health wise from this food than women

If you give in to fast food cravings for those oh-so-good, but oh-so-bad for you burgers, fries and thighs you could be putting your brain at perilous risk of memory-destroying inflammation.

And if you’re male, you’re most at risk. Does that mean women can jump to the front of the fried chicken buffet?

Lab tests at the Cedars-Sinai Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute in Los Angeles shows that greasy high fat meals are particularly dangerous for brains and hearts belonging to men. Women, for some reason, don’t seem as vulnerable.

“For the first time, we have identified remarkable differences in the sexes when it comes to how the body responds to high-fat diets,” says researcher Deborah Clegg. “In the study, the (lab animals) were given the equivalent of a steady diet of hamburgers and soda. The brains of the male (animals) became inflamed and their hearts were damaged. But the female(s)… showed no brain inflammation and had normal hearts during the diet.”

Cleggs says that the females in the research enjoyed potent physiological defenses against the negative effects of the high-fat, high sugar diet they were fed. They didn’t suffer the kind of heart disease and brain inflammation that the males did.

“It is as if the brains of females had a chemical force field that kept the dangers of fats and sugars from harming them,” Clegg says. “Our data in this study also adds to the growing body of evidence that brain inflammation may be a key factor in the obesity epidemic. These negative brain changes can occur even over a short period of eating fatty and sugary food and clearly affected males much more than females.”

Even though men’s brains were affected much worse than women in this study, both sexes would be better served avoiding fatty, sugary foods altogether. Pro-inflammatory foods fuel disease, which many believe to be the root cause of chronic disease. If not your brain or heart, it will affect other parts of your body and ultimately your health.

A number of studies have shown that visceral fat, the weight we carry in our midsection, contributes to inflammation, and vice versa. This is a significant risk factor in metabolic syndrome (aka prediabetes), a skyrocketing epidemic related to chronic inflammation, cardiovascular disease, obesity, insulin resistance and other factors. To make matters worse, elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol join forces with visceral fat to produce inflammatory cytokines—proteins that promote oxidation.

In addition to fast foods, processed and fried foods, those that have been grilled too much are high in advanced glycation end products (AGEs), which trigger oxidation and inflammation. As the acronym suggests, these glycotoxins promote premature aging and disease, particularly when consumed in excess.

Inflammation doesn’t truly discriminate. It gets to you one way or another if not careful.