Love Fatty Foods? You Should Become a Fighter Pilot!

fatty-food

Thanksgiving is just 6 weeks away – a time for turkey, gravy, butter, pie, ice cream and other high fat foods. So here is an idea – after you load up on a huge fatty Thanksgiving meal, why not take an F-16 for a spin? You do know that a new study shows that a high fat diet puts you in the best mental state to fly a plane – right?

Fighter Pilots Eat Fats to Stay Sharp

A military-funded study was conducted that sought to figure out what types of foods were best for pilots when missions restricted when or what they could eat. University of North Dakota researchers found that pilots who ate the fattiest foods such as butter or gravy had the quickest response times in mental tests and made fewer mistakes when flying in tricky cloud conditions.

“We wound up analyzing the data every which way but upside down. It came out consistent every time,” said psychology professor Tom Petros, who conducted and reviewed the tests.

The study tracked 45 student pilots to assess how different foods affect a pilot’s performance. Every three weeks, each pilot spent one week on four different diets: high-fat, high-carbohydrate, high-protein and a control diet.

We Are Not Talking About Just Healthy Omega-3 Fats Here

It is well documented that Omega-3 Fatty Acids (found in fish oils) are very healthy, so it would not be surprising if the pilots were just loading up on fish fats. No, the pilots on the high fat diet were getting things like extra butter and gravy, pizza with extra cheese and large brownies for dessert.

Should we All Start Pouring Gravy on our Granola?

Of course not. This was a limited study and does not track weight gain or any other health outcomes. It is interesting in that is shows two things. First, we understand very little about the role of diet and mental function. Second, we need to keep testing our theories. If we had to bet at the start of the study which diet would be the worst for mental performance – we would have said the high fat diet. As they say, that’s why you run the tests!