You already know fried food isn’t doing you any favors—but what if the real danger isn’t just the food, but the oil it’s cooked in? Buckle up, because new research just torched a long-standing kitchen habit: reusing cooking oil. It’s cheap, easy, and a staple for street vendors and restaurants alike. However, it turns out that reheated oil might be slowly deep-frying your brain.
At the 2024 Discover BMB conference, scientists dropped a truth bomb that should make anyone think twice before biting into that golden, crispy snack. A study led by Kathiresan Shanmugam of the Central University of Tamil Nadu found that rats fed reheated oils didn’t just suffer liver damage and inflammation—they showed neurodegeneration. That’s right—brain damage. And not just in the rats, but also in their offspring.
Here’s how the experiment went down: scientists fed five groups of female rats different diets—some with fresh oil, others with oil that had been heated and reused, just like your local food truck might do. After 30 days, the results were grim. Rats consuming the reheated sesame or sunflower oil exhibited serious oxidative stress, disrupted gut biomes, liver inflammation, and a significant decline in DHA, the critical omega-3 fatty acid that your brain relies on.
What followed? Damage to brain tissue. A biological horror story playing out under a microscope.
This isn’t just about rats. This is about you. If your go-to fried fix is being dunked in reused oil, you’re potentially setting yourself up for neurological decline. The researchers are already planning to dig deeper, looking into links between reused oil and Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, anxiety, and even depression.
What to do? Load up on omega-3s. Consider curcumin and oryzanol. And most of all, steer clear of reused oil. Because it’s not just ruining your arteries—it could be rewiring your brain for the worse.
