There’s nothing quite like slipping into our ugliest, most comfortable sweatpants and settling in to binge a new TV show while snacking on the tastiest-but-unhealthiest foods possible.

But let’s face it, as fun as it can be, eating refined carbohydrates, high-fat foods and sugary snacks can result in becoming overweight and having poor physical health, in general.

If that’s not enough motivation to jettison the junk food, new research from Australia highlights how fatty, sugary diets can also negatively affect our cognitive ability.

That’s right, those sweet snacks and saturated fats aren’t just adding inches to waistlines, they’re bringing down our brains as well.

The new study focused on spatial navigation, or learning and remembering how to get from one location to another, which is known to approximate the health of the brain’s hippocampus [hip-puh-KAM-pus].

Participants were tasked with successfully navigating a virtual reality maze six times to find a treasure chest. The treasure chest was then removed, and participants were asked to locate where the chest had been in earlier rounds.

Researchers found that those whose diets included less fat and sugar were able to more accurately pinpoint where the treasure chest had been.

While the evidence is clear, the researchers said the good news is that brain health can easily be improved by altering one’s diet, which can in turn improve the health of the hippocampus.

Americans have access to more high-fat and sugary snacks than ever before, but exercising a little self-control can go a long way, especially for our spatial navigation skills.

How else will we find our way to the pantry?