Short-term memory getting worse? Exercise getting harder? Examine your diet. New research published online in The FASEB Journal showed that in less than 10 days of eating a high-fat diet, rats had a decreased ability to exercise and experienced significant short-term memory loss. These results show an important link between what we eat, how we think, and how our bodies perform.

It's basically a given that diets loaded with fat can lead to considerable health problems. But a new study in the April issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, shows that in some cases diets that are high in both fat and protein can be even worse.

Indulgence in a high-fat diet can not only lead to overweight because of excessive calorie intake, but also can affect the balance of circadian rhythms – everyone's 24-hour biological clock, Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers have shown.

A team of Université Laval researchers has shown that the main neurological markers for Alzheimer's disease are exacerbated in the brains of mice fed a diet rich in animal fat and poor in omega-3s.

Diets that are high in fat can shift the timing of the body’s internal clock, researchers report in the November issue of Cell Metabolism, a publication of Cell Press.

Our body’s 24-hour internal clock, or circadian clock, regulates the time we go to sleep, wake up and become hungry as well as the daily rhythms of many metabolic functions. The clock - an ancient molecular machine found in organisms large and small, simple and complex - properly aligns one’s physiology with one’s environment.

A high fat diet may kill regulatory T cells in the liver, allowing steatosis (simple fatty liver) to develop into steatohepatitis (fatty liver with inflammation), according to the results of a new study in the November issue of Hepatology, a journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD).

Patients treated for colon cancer who had a diet high in meat, refined grains, fat and desserts had an increased risk of cancer recurrence and death compared with patients who had a diet high in fruits and vegetables, poultry and fish, according to a study in the August 15 issue of JAMA.

Macrophages - the scavenger cells of the body's immune system - are known as troublemakers for the role they play in obesity, but Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have found that the cells can also be saviors when it comes to metabolism.

Scientists at the University of Virginia and the Medical College of Wisconsin have discovered that a gene that participates in the regulation of the body's biological rhythms may also be a major control in regulating metabolism. Their finding shows that mice lacking the gene Nocturnin, which is regulated by the circadian clock in the organs and tissues of mammals, are resistant to weight gain when put on a high fat diet and also are resistant to the accumulation of fat in the liver.

Eating a high-fat diet may lead to an increased risk of invasive breast cancer in postmenopausal women.