NEW YORK (CBS NEWS) - Most Americans love junk food. But a new study found that such foods can do more than expand your waistline — they can also affect your brain. The study, in the journal Public Health Nutrition, indicates that people who regularly eat commercial baked goods like doughnuts and croissants, or fast foods such as pizza, hamburgers and hot dogs, are at greater risk for depression.

In the study, done by Researchers from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the University of Granada, researchers looked at nearly 9,000 people for about six years. Participants were asked to report how frequently they ate certain foods — specifically fast foods such as burgers and fries, as well as baked goods. At the beginning of the study, none of them had been diagnosed with depression, but by the end, almost 500 had depression. Those who ate the most fast food were 51 percent more likely to develop clinical depression than those who ate the least.

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