Junk Food Can Scramble Memory in Just Four Days? Oh My!

Gordon Ramsay’s Scrambled Eggs, photograph by JoyThe press office at the UNC School of Medicine wins the prize for clickbait this week with this gem: “Junk food can scramble memory in just four days.”

That headline inspired some impressive creativity. From the seed of junk food to scramble memory sprouted headlines about rewired brains, disrupted memory circuits, cognitive decline, and brain damage. The message is clear. Your brain is doomed if you eat those fries.

Humans, Scrambled Memories, and Junk Food Not Studied

A few pesky facts get in the way of a prize for this creative journalism. First is the perspective that this was a study of mouse neurons – not human brain function. Four days is more important in the life of a mouse than it is in a human life. Then there’s that vivid concept of “scrambled” memories. We could not find anything about scrambled memories anywhere in the study. It’s not even clear how anyone would measure scrambled memories. Publications about this as an endpoint for clinical study cannot be found.

But peskiest of all is the fact that nobody got junk food in this study. Instead of chips and cookies, these mice got a diet of high-fat mouse pellet food.

Junk in the Eyes of the Beholder

The terminology of “junk food” might be useful for signaling about virtue, vice, and cultural preferences. But it’s not very meaningful scientifically. For science and health communication, especially about nutrition, staying grounded in facts about nutrition is best. Let’s leave the moral judgments to philosophers and theologians.

Click here for the study, here for the press release, here, here, and here for a smattering of the reporting it spawned.

Gordon Ramsay’s Scrambled Eggs, photograph by Joy, licensed under CC BY 2.0

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October 2, 2025