change. the state of the news live from berlin we have more coming up at the top of the hour up next our series doc film we're taking a look at the positive impact of good nutrition on how our brains work for now though for me brian thomas and the entire news team thanks so much for being here. and language courses. video audio. anytime anywhere.

it's impossible to avoid them. for decades we've been surrounded by sweet and fatty food. and the body has not been dealing well with these eating out. but what about the brain and. do our mental health our moods and our brain abilities suffer from the wrong kind of nutrition. we know that john feed is making as fast that science is telling us now that it might also be shrinking outright. brain researchers are joined the dining table to study the effects of our eating out. dots on high in fat and sugar in a long term need to change isn't part of the brain hoping. this is a recent field of research a developing science that spotlights

a new facet of nutrition. bittorrent a preferred sugar salts into reprogramming of the brain in short our brain is affected by what's on our plates. you know how it starts with our very 1st meals even before birth. the brain is built up during pregnancy. our functions later on depends on how it has been nourished by the expectant mothers diet over 9 months. a number of consequences of poor nutrition during gestation a been known for a long time. today scientists in

australia are looking at the repercussions of nutrition on brain function. journeys chunka a professor at the university of melbourne examined the behavior of babies after following the eating habits of $23.00 and pregnant women. we mentioned their intake of drunken courses food squeamish if they're in type of the healthful foods foods with lots of fiber and nutrients etc and then when you looked at the emotional health all things children over the 1st few years of life and icing months to 5 years of course taking into account things such as education income mothers mental health parenting practices they sorts of things and what we saw very clearly was that mothers who white more junk and cloisters food so sweet drinks and so to see their son you know type space to during their pregnancy the

children had moved things behaviors such as gratian and anger and tension. just describing correlation and suggests that the mother's diet impacts the mental development of the baby so the link remains to be demonstrated on the biological level. in any case release junkie is convinced. so what we also saw in this logical wage and studies that the children start saying to be important as well independent of what. if children were 18 too much junk and processed foods and or not enough of the healthful foods they had more of these anger and aggressive top behaviors but also sadness anxiety worry not me has. been since then professor jackers conclusion he said been confirmed by studies in spain the netherlands and canada access fountain sugar aren't. in the sides of scientists

working on the brain. excesses and deficiencies junk food is often low on essential nutrients so it leaves the body and especially the nerve cells lacking. in this laboratory at the university of bordeaux scientists are studying the consequences of dietary deficiencies unmount sprains. this experiment is used to measure anxiety. the animal has the choice between exploring a lighted area or hiding in the shade. a normal mouse takes the time to examine the lighted area. but this animal was

deprived or mega 3 fatty acids during his development omega 3 these are called good friends due to their benefits to the heart and arteries instead of exploring the environment the mouse takes refuge in a dark corner it's stressed anxious. the experiment has been reproduced many times on dozens of mice for researchers this strange behavior can be simply explained without omega 3 fatty acids the brain does not develop and function normally. they're needed because the brain's grey matter is 90 percent fat which it cannot produce its own as that was the brain is the organ after adipose tissue that's the richest in polyunsaturated fatty acid or in the good 3 wides so in the 3 is indispensable because the body cannot make it we have to ingest it it has to come from the diet that's all. oily fish.

organ meat and vegetable oils and seeds and not such as all men said longer in the main sources that were made at 3 for humans but these foods have become scarce in the cuisine of industrialized countries. the amount of omega 3 that enters the brain is crucial for making brain cells more efficient because when these fatty acids are incorporated into the membranes of nerve cells they improve their electrical properties you know make a 3 rich neurons the signals propagate faster. the network is more efficient depriving the brain of omega 3 is linked to a risk that it will function less well. i've looked at the source and the general population is deficient in a bigger 3 we have insufficient intake of a nigga 3 so it's important to pay attention to it especially in the prenatal developmental period during this period omega 3 embeds itself in massive quantities into the brain also in adolescence when there's often

a change of food and during aging where the incorporation into the brain of a mega 3 tends to be less effective so we must increase its intake of wanted a clear that. the 1st rule for a brain to run at full speed is avoid deficiencies. for good nutrients and a very dire should be available what happens to neurons when meals are poor and above all always the same that is a problem that is now affecting the while living european hamster which thrived for a long time in the plains are friends as are sus which are. safe in 1960 s. there's been a decline in the hamster population which is on the verge of extinction today and at the same time we've noticed an increase in the agricultural area where corn is cultivated. carlene are bored wondered whether the collapse of the population was

linked to the sudden glut of corn. so she did an experiment feeding hamsters exclusively corn. during breeding we have served behavioral disturbances in females which resulted in hyper aggression and hyper sensitivity as soon as there was noise in the rooms around every one abscess. each. time. is your above all what we did not expect is that these females would devour their young the 1st day after birth this behave. it was observed in more than 80 percent of females. but dietary deficiency was enough to make a hamster deep our it's children because a simple vitamin. think of vitamin

b 3 deficiency is at the origin of the normal behavior when we supplemented them with vitamin b 3 in addition to their corn based diet they expressed quite normal behaviors and they began to nurse their young to raise them in the same way as the females that were fed a diversified diet since. the case of the cannibalistic hamsters is disturbing. could an unbalanced diet also trigger aggressive violent behavior in humans. up suburb is a clinical psychologist and political advisor to the dutch ministry of justice his specialty nutrition and crime. he's convinced that enriching food with vitamins fatty acids and minerals can reduce aggression. it's a hypothesis that is difficult to test in normal life because so many factors and

circumstances can influence our behavior and our impulses. you know order to study nutrition without the influence of the many parameters he chose prisons as a nearly ideal setting. in a lot of heaven and here in the netherlands we conducted a study of young prisoners in 8 different prisons who do all of the demand for 3 months we get them vitamins and minerals and fatty acid supplements and then we looked at the effect on their behavior. we measured it in 2 different ways the father and the 1st we asked the detainees how aggressive they were and we asked the supervisors for their views on the issue. above all we looked at the incident log the number of times detainees were punished and we saw that solitary confinement had fallen dramatically. after all but i had a saddle horse. in the group of inmates whose meals were improved the number of

incidents was reduced by one 3rd. of. what we may have the power to change our mood to stimulate certain impulses. but could the food on our plate also influence our decisions the ones we believe we make using our free will. as event and then mentioned when i pull or asked if they think that the food that they eat has an impact on health and most answer yes. and. then when asked if diet can also influence thoughts and decisions very few people are willing to believe this is the case and this cancer fit a lot in it for. however at the institute of psychology of the university of liberty in germany professor so young parklands

were the 1st time proved. that. her work reveals the mechanism by which food could influence our thoughts and for that the researcher has developed a rather original experiment would. imagine that you face the following dilemma. the money on the table is to be divided into 2 sums but it's your partner a stranger who decides how it is to be distributed. i give you to yours and i keep a for me. if you accept the unfair offer you leave with a little money but much less than your partner's. if you refuse no one wins anything so what would you do. do you accept the offer and take the 2 year olds even if you feel cheated or do you refuse and leave with empty pockets

but your head held high. well it turns out surprisingly that whether you'll take the money or not depends on what you've just eaten. and these are stored as part of the study we follow 24 people who came into the laboratory twice to have 2 different breakfasts. for us v.f.s. that one is as we found that the same person made completely different decisions based on what the ate in the morning because on. it. to the test person the 2 breakfasts looked the same in reality one is far more protein rich than the other. the ratio of protein to sugar is the only parameter the changes. a

few hours after the meal the subject takes several test on a computer. today he accepts the offer his self-interest outweighs his anger at the unfairness and he will leave with a little money in his pocket. last week he mainly refused and one almost no. one fed the poor but the subject having consumed a high protein breakfast in the morning was tolerant of unfair offers toller. on fitness and get what it conversely the subject too consumed a high carbohydrate breakfast habits was less tolerant in the face of unfair offers yet. on average the subjects who had little protein rejected unfair offers this wise as often. but how can the surprising result be explained in their search

for biological evidence for this observation that scientists carried out blood tests in the sun the blood to liberace for analysis will measure the level of hormones in amino acids in the blood the whole moans we're interested in insulin cortisol adrenalin and adreno cortico tropic hormone and for amino acids trip to fun and tyra's in put off. of these substances the most important is tyrosine the amino acid is one building block of a protein that is key to brain function dopamine. this molecule ensures communication between neurons involved in motivation and risk taking. the results of the blood analysis show that subjects with higher levels of tyra's in their blood are more willing to accept the unfair offer.

you know other words what we eat can within hours subtly alter the chemistry of the brain and the communication between the neurons. enough to guide some of our decisions. experiments are continuing in the back to confirm this result the implications are wide ranging. remember their. sense i eat 3 times a day every day is we realize that food has immense power that of modifying and shaping mankind norm. so it's essential to think about how we can use food to promote our wellbeing and optimize our mental state. or to own up to me and that's. not only does an unbalanced diet affect our brain functions and behavior and our meal plan interfere with daily decision as it also becomes increasingly

clear that diet plays a decisive role in our mood and possibly mental health. but what about junk food dripping with sugar and bad fats. what would happen if we gave more of that heat. this is the focus of research here in australia at the university of sydney. margaret morris runs a laboratory where rats are fed the kind of junk food that you find in supermarkets

for cheap fast food restaurants. erik's parents use a range of western foods at the time aiden by all of us so we feed our rats meat pies chips cakes and biscuits the sorts of foods that are vettel a valuable and cheap so we'll model in the western world. the 1st consequence of this diet the rat doubles its food ration as. the animal never seems to. but that's not the most surprising outcome. one of our chief interests is the impact of his diet on the animals memory and we can measure this is lee in the rat using

a task known as the novel object and novel place task. in this test the researcher places objects in the rat's cage. the animal comes over immediately to examine the. rodents are very curious by nature. once it's completed its examination and memorized its surroundings is temporarily removed we then place the animal in the arena with one object that's been shifted. by its return the rat spends more time examining the object that has changed places because it already knows the other object is there engraved in its memory.

the rats are stuffed full of bad foods or behaves differently. what we observed is the animals eating a high fat diet or high sugar diet or the combined high fat high sugar foods were less able to recognize to remember that that object had moved they explored the 2 objects about the same that shows any payment at the spatial memory. the overfed rants have not only damaged special memory but also other malfunctions that sound a warning signal for the scientists 'd they point to damages in the hippocampus a small region nestled in the center of the brain. it's essential for learning and the consolidation of memory. recent studies show that in humans

a 2 energy rich diet also interferes with medical contrasts. they say for example that the quality of people's diets is related to the size of the hippocampus to the size of the gray and white matter value and they're starting to be intervention studies so for example we say that only 4 days on junk food top diet will have an impact on culprits the functions that are lights of the hippocampus. for margaret morris is now seeking to understand how sugary and fatty foods disrupt the brain of her rats to the point of affecting their performance. she has a hypothesis namely eating too much bathroom sugar triggers an inflammatory reaction that spreads to the neurons. so in response to these foods there's

a general inflammatory response all around the body this is being both described in obesity but it now appears to be quite an acute response as well and what we find is that inflammatory molecules such as sata concert increased in response to the dot. and overly rich diet confuses the immune system. it responds by triggering an inflammatory reaction especially in fatty tissues. are fat masses released substances that then propagate this information throughout the body. neurons were thought to be spared this effect behind the protective blood . same barrier the semi permeable membrane that separates the circulating blood vessels from the brain. so there's increased inflammation in the

holes the body and we think that this may spread to the brain. that's because the blood brain barrier which normally protects the brain from inflammatory molecules may be impaired in fact by the tide and become leaky allowing traffic of molecules into the frame. and the inflammation infiltrates them in n.g.'s and then triggers a surprising phenomena. in her laboratory so feel a as shown in her overfed mice that certain immune cells in the brain the micro clear all cells begin to devour neurons. a signal called these microbial souls within the brain are important because they can eat dead near us here in the hood when they're deregulated especially in a situation of on balance nutrition they start to eat near owns the to realize

their full by consuming these neurons in excessive numbers eventually they will destroy or participate in the destruction of neural networks this way that includes neurons that are alive and that should be functional divot forcing. this reaction of the micro global cells could be filmed in vitro. the images show how energetically they move. the red objects or fragments of neurons that they ingest all in an obese mouse the activity becomes frenetic all this phenomenon is suspected of significantly affecting the functioning of the brave little boy. we think signs of people for 30 years don't eat these phage she might have a heart attack you might get cancer and diabetes it hasn't worked to change people's behavior we hope that if people understand that what they put in their

mouth is actually really essential to the health of bear bryant. and that of the children that might have a more profound impact on people's daughtry choices. microscope micro manipulator and ultra sensitive recorder. so v.a. for mentoring is at the helm of an apparatus that can record the electrical activity of a single neuron the principle is simple a slice of mouse brain is immersed in a liquid that keeps it alive. the researcher approaches it carefully with an electrode. it's a meticulous operation. it's user this one here i go down the people that in the

slice of brain and into normal and now we will approach this recording people at near the neuron to make contact. that's it we made contact and now we will be able to measure the electrical activity of the new year i like that heat electrical. it pick up and peaks that we see a potential areas for action you put in all this is how neurons in code information . the time that he lapses between the peaks is the message sent by the neurons. and then to normal now we will increase the glucose concentration in the bath and we will see if this cell responds to this increase in concentration of glucose because. as they can be seen here this cell responds to the increase with more electrical activity but there is more potential for action than what could be seen here before the increasing to cause concentration. in this signal

comes from a single cell but in the brain the neurons are all connected to each other. and that makes the scientists suspect that glucose has the ability to modify the activity of an entire brain areas and to control the emotions and pleasure. is this how sugar ensures its grip on our will. this is for the moment only our processes but today sugar addiction is the subject of intense research in laboratories and what appears more and more clear is that the power of sugar is similar to that of a drug. search

up magic is one of the 1st to provide proof with a very simple experiment. step one he raised rents giving them cocaine and sugar. man after weeks of this diet he presented the animals with a choice. of clones of all it's true is true we have a situation in which the animal has the choice between a lever that is connected to a syringe that contains drugs solution and the drug in question is a hard drug like cocaine and heroin and on the left a lever allows him to control a syringe that contains a sweet drink and there we see the animal chooses to take the sweet drink. the rats selected the sugar water 4 times more often than the drugs. it can't be called a glucose overdose but the every present will desire is plain to see. also

think spoke to some so this experiment is simply shows that sugar has more addictive potential don't we had imagined and it is perhaps even stronger than the pull of hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin. also today we live in a food environment thats a little crazy. we find sugar in a lot of foods as we would expect in sugary drinks. but we also find sugar in foods that are not meant to be sweet such as how all soup where we could cite other examples but it's adding sugar to these foods the contributes to the fact that we make people addicted to it without them knowing you through.

fear of the oregon research institute the influence of sweet food on the human brain is being investigated. what this program of research has revealed is that habitual consumption of energy dense food alters here and there all circuitry in the exactly the same way of consumption of drugs appears. eric stice recruited about 100 students half of whom regularly eat ice cream while the others never eat. they all came to the laboratory to drink a milkshake inside an m.r.i. device and give the researchers a peek into their brain to. create cases so what we're going to do today is give each of them up and record the brain activity in your entire brain as you receive an anticipated receiving truck and not check to look at the neural basis of

consuming energy dense foods. the test subjects can sip the milkshake through the tubes without moving their heads. what we found out is that the people who never eat ice cream you could trace that reward circuitry everything lit up just beautifully and it activated things are very strongly about in contrast to people who ate ice cream every day showed a very diminished response there is hardly any activation whatsoever illustrating that regular intake of energy dense foods really reduces the pleasure you experience when you consume those foods. the reward circuit is a region of the brain that controls the feeling of pleasure that is particularly responsive to sugar consumption but eating too much ends up weakening its responsiveness so that at the same dose the sensations of pleasure are ultimately reduced. and eric stine says experiment reveals another more subtle perhaps

more pernicious effect. after a diet too rich in sugar the brain becomes hyper sensitive to any. juz of food. the more and more you eat ice cream the less and less the reward circuitry is recruited when you consume eyes fim but the more your reward circuitry is or is activated when you see cues that say you might get ice cream so your but your reward circuitry fires up when you see an ice cream store as you're driving down the street or you see a commercial for ice cream on the television the reward circuitry activates much more for people who eat ice cream all the time than it does for people who don't and that promise even in the absence of hunger that drives obesity and weight gain . this direct influence of food on our brain plays a crucial role in what we choose to eat each day.

what happens in the brain at the moment we pick a dessert rather than an appetizer or fish rather than red meat who is really pulling the strings. carlos for a bureau and his team are leading researchers on food choices. what we really want is to find all the components all the genes the molecules the neurons which direct feeding decisions and for that we have to be able to look at very. small effects. the simplicity of this animal model the fly makes it possible to explore new avenues and new hypotheses. to understand the feeding

a view of the fly corals will be our own has developed a machine that monitors the insects choices in great detail. when it's touching the food which is in the other electrode with it's told the process then we can measure that with a sensor here which is the same sensor which you use on your i pad on your i phone to detect touch on the screen just out here we don't detect the touch screen for the touch of the food and so we can move really know that i think that underlies the choice of the flashy to produce but also when she's eating from the different food how it eats how much it eve how fast it ether awful i really dissect all the details of the decisions which are controlled by the brain. thanks to this technique he's been able to prove that the main reason for choosing food is 1st of all deficiencies. naturally flies that lack protein will choose protein rich

food. but. looking more closely the bureau observed that this is not always the case. sometimes actually we had some flies which didn't have this strong urge to eat protein and then we were wondering why that was the case right and so when we looked at it turned out that the florist's which had no craving for protein had got microbes and so from following up on many experiments we could show that there are 2 specific got microbes which when they are in the fly they suppress protein for protein appetite and therefore these 2 microbes have a very important influence on protein cravings influence. flies when choosing their diet are influenced by the bacteria in their gut. this unexpected discovery raises an important question does the human intestinal flora

called the micro biome also act on our brains. do our gut bacteria play a role in our food preferences. at the university college cork in ireland jon cryer and does pioneering research on the micro biome. he's been able to prove that gut bacteria can influence certain behaviors in animals as well. when you take. microbes from highly anxious mice and transplant them to normal anxious mice they become much more anxious and vice versa that even when you take them from normal you can normalize distress responds and then. scientists now even consider the micro biome to be

a kind of intermediary a link between food and the brain. the main factor that influences the composition of these microbes is the food we take diet and the diversity of the diet is really important from the moment we're born until we die in shaping the composition of the microbes and so we're beginning to realize the importance that what we have on what's in our microbes and how that's influencing what's going on in our brain. our well being depends in one way or another on our micro biome. a diet that is good for our mood is 1st and foremost a done it reduces suitable for the bacteria in our intestines. this is led to the i do you using food for the brain and maintain mental health. and

it is the famous mediterranean diet because the scientists excited. the traditional mediterranean diet is really high in a dog this ranks of plant food so lots of different leafy greens and different colored vegetables but also i fruits very importantly so this is your beans and lentils and she pays nothing not some seeds fish and of course all evil oil olive oil is a very important component of the mediterranean diet and we think that that diversity leads to more diversity in the guttmacher the bunker part of that we've been out gosh and that diversity in the god has been linked to good health outcomes. where around the 1st study last year where we recruited $67.00 people with major

depression there was a daughtry support with a clinical doc to sion now over a 3 month period this trial took place and at the end of that. when we measured their depression again we saw that the degree of change in their diet correlated with the degree of change in their depression so the more they move towards a mediterranean diet the more their depression increased. using diet to serve the brain. it's an idea that's catching on. and scientists are now exploring all kinds of clues. spices used for centuries in traditional indian medicine are now being studied in labs for their benefit for mental health.

grid fruits and berries of awaken high expectations the poly phenols they contain might be able to rejuvenating neurons on the decline. red fruits and spices the miracle ingredients for eternally young neurons. it's still too early to say for sure. researchers are only just beginning to one cover the secrets of the remarkable relationship between nutrition and the brain. the ideal menu for our little grey cells is still largely unknown but a balanced diverse diet which does without processed food and sugar and favors fruits and vegetables seems so far to be the best recipe for preserving the mental

faculties. my grandmother sat. you are what you eat so each well and what we're realizing now is that science is beginning to understand how true the port-o. lighted if we limited the deficiencies would not reduce crime a little too early to say what we do know is that when you bet on healthy eating it has effects on behavior because the more we overeat snickers bars we become hyper vigilant to snicker cues and we need a lot of snickers and we create that monster are some sort the best thing to do if you have kids or feed them healthy foods and not getting used to getting this kind of crop. i can't believe i just said crops are.

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this is due to. a new migration crisis for a euro migrants are gathering at turkey's border to greece but not allowed to move forward they say president ever to one is using them as a bargaining chip also coming up the new etiquettes to contain the coronavirus germany's interior minister is not shaking hands with anyone.