You are what you eat, according to the adage. But it’s not just the body that’s impacted. According to research from UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, living in a disadvantaged neighborhood can affect food choices, weight gain and even the microstructure of the brain.
The study, appearing in Communications Medicine, a Nature journal, finds poor quality of available foods, increased intake of calories from foods high in trans-fatty acids, and environments that do not foster physical activity, all prevalent in disadvantaged neighborhoods, disrupt the flexibility of information processing in the brain that is involved in reward, emotion regulation, and cognition.
Previous research showed that living in a disadvantaged neighborhood can impact brain health, but in this study, researchers did a detailed analysis of the brain’s cortex to determine how living in a disadvantaged area can…
