AHS16 - Ancestral Health Symposium 2016

In addition to its effects on physical wellbeing, diet also plays a major role in mood, cognition, and psychological wellbeing. I first summarize my recent empirical work on the detrimental effects of a refined, low-fat diet on cognition in the rat. In addition to its obesogenic properties, this diet causes deficits in motivation, attention, and impulse control. Next I will place this research in the greater context of psychological theory and phenomena. Key concepts from psychology offer many insights into the modern diet-related health problems. I will touch on concepts such as Super-Normal stimuli, Pavlovian conditioning, delay discounting, learned helplessness, overshadowing and blocking, the addictive-like nature of junk foods, habit learning, and endocrine dysregulation by chronic stress. But all hope is not lost. I conclude with some solutions psychology can offer to rescue us from diet-induced problems.