How bad is junk food for you? Consuming junk food can make your blood sugar levels spike and cause the equivalent damage to your kidneys as type 2 diabetes, according to a new study published in Experimental Physiology.

To  understand how excess sugar or fat affect glucose transport in the kidneys, researchers fed mice a junk food-based diet of chocolate, marshmallows, cheese and biscuits for eight weeks. Afterwards, the rodents were  tested to determine the effects of the diet on blood sugar levels and various glucose transporters in the kidneys and  were compared to other mice that were not fed the high-fat diet but already possessed type 1 or type 2 diabetes.

Guess what? That’s right, the results showed that a junk food-heavy diet caused an increase in glucose transporters and regulatory proteins,  issues which were observed in the control group of mice that already had diabetes.

Chichger and his team conclude that an effective treatment for diabetic patients could include medication that blocks glucose transporters in the kidneys to decrease blood glucose levels.

Lead author of the study, Dr. Havovi Chichger noted that the Western diet contains more and more processed junk food and fat and that there is a well-established link between excessive consumption of this type of food and recent increases in the prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes. “In our study, type 1 and type 2 diabetes both induce changes in glucose transport in the kidney, but junk food or a diet high in fat causes changes that are very similar to those found in type 2 diabetes.”

Chichger and his team conclude that an effective treatment for diabetic patients could include medication that blocks glucose transporters in the kidneys to decrease blood glucose levels.