A comparative study of Western, high-carbohydrate, and standard lab diet consumption throughout adolescence on metabolic and anxiety-related outcomes in young adult male and female Long-Evans rats.

Anxiety and obesity are prevalent health concerns that are affected by diet in rodents and humans. How diet influences the development and maintenance of anxiety and obesity has been challenging to characterize, in part, due to methodological differences in chosen experimental and control diets. Within the same experiment, anxiety- and obesity-related effects were characterized in rats fed a Western diet (WD) relative to two control diets.