We all know that what you eat can change your physical
appearance. It also alters how your body functions, making it
more or less difficult to pump blood, grow healthy bones or
process insulin. New research presented this week at the
Neuroscience 2012 conference suggests that what you eat can even
alter your brain -- and vice versa. Timothy Verstynen and his
colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging to observe
the brain activity in 29 adults. The study participants were
shown words on a screen in various colors and asked to identify
the color, not the word. Sometimes it was easy -- the word red
printed in red; other times it was harder, like seeing the word
red printed in blue. The overweight and obese participants'
brains showed more activity during difficult questions,
suggesting they were working harder to get the same answers.
Verstynen said the results imply that obese people are less
efficient at making complex decisions, which could be important
for controlling impulse behavior. His team th