Movie Popcorn Is Eating Your Brain

Hey, remember how yesterday popcorn was a magical antioxidant-packed wizard-snack that was saving everyone’s life? Well now it’s today. And today popcorn is all, “PSYCH!!! I’m eating yo brainz, ding-dongs!” This isn’t new news, exactly—we’ve been hearing about the horrific respiratory issues among popcorn factory workers for years now—but now it seems that popcorn’s not just destroying your lungs, it’s destroying your memories.

Quoth UPI:

Diacetyl, a flavoring used to produce the buttery flavor and aroma of microwave popcorn and other food, may be linked to Alzheimer’s, U.S. researchers say…Vince’s team said it realized that diacetyl has an architecture similar to a substance that makes beta-amyloid proteins clump together in the brain — this clumping is the hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. Other laboratory experiments also showed diacetyl easily penetrated the “blood-brain barrier,” which keeps many harmful substances from entering the brain, Vince said. “In light of the chronic exposure of industry workers to diacetyl, this study raises the troubling possibility of long-term neurological toxicity mediated by diacetyl,” the researchers said in a statement.

Okay, so it’s not really popcorn’s fault—it’s that janky yellow chemical butter death spray. Duh. Incidentally, diacetyl is also found in “margarines, snack foods, candy, baked goods, pet foods and other products such as beer or some chardonnay wine.” Great. People, just cook your popcorn at home (NOT in the microwave, which is gross anyway), stick to pumpkin juice instead of butter-flavored beer, don’t work at an industrial microwave popcorn factory, and sit back and wait to get plain old mystery Alzheimer’s like the rest of us.

And sidenote, can we please stop poisoning our industrial workers with toxic vapors, just so that we can make our garbage corn taste like fake food? Is that worth it? Because we’re really burning through human lungs like gangbusters here. Just a thought. THX.