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Comparative assessments of dietary sugars on cognitive performance (2018)
- deepsun 5y agoBut book "Willpower" mentions a lot of research where glucose did a lot positive for, well, not cognition, but for Willpower, ego depletion, and resilience.
- saurik 5y agoThe research on that whole area of psychology is inclusive at best, despite making a fun and compelling narrative. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29591537/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29591537/
- selimthegrim 5y agoInconclusive?
- saurik 5y agoCorrect: as in there isn't actually sufficient evidence to make the case one way or the other, based on the data that has since been published (which means we know even less than "it isn't true").
- deepsun 5y agoWell, the book Willpower also does mention research experiments with description of the process, not out results. I don't know who to believe, this one paper, or theirs multiple.
- hdhdhsjsu 5y agoAh, trendy bro science. If you think glucose is bad for you, you lack a rudimentary understanding of biology. No, ketones do not replace glucose. But it’s ok because you probably lack rudimentary understanding of protein and most other health related things. Keep up the zealotry.
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- chrisweekly 5y agoDownvoted for tone, not substance.
- henearkr 5y agoYou're overly generalizing? Nobody says that ketones "replace" (without any detail) glucose, only that ketones "replace glucose as source of energy". And that is correct, as the citric acid cycle accepts ketones as input for the production of ATP. Moreover, the body scarcely use any glucides besides as an energy source, so I don't really see your point...
- jcampbell1 5y agoThe conclusion makes no sense as glucose is half as sweet as sucrose, which is half as sweet as fructose. Does anyone have the paper for how they controlled for this? It makes perfect sense if sweetness is the stimulant.
- NullChronos 5y agoHumans evolved colour vision to detect ripe fruit. Fruit has a, relatively, considerable amount of sugar. For such a substantial mutation, for which all of us share, it would seem counter-productive to evolve such a trait that harms us.
- Romanulus 5y agoSure... oxygen is good for us but it becomes toxic if we get too much of it (like with anything). Perhaps if we were living more like rugged-style, svelte cavemen it would be okay to get a burst of sugar here and there (instead of every time we plop down on the couch or roll through a drive-through).
- mattnewton 5y agoMy impression was that was just a theory based on the assumption that fruit was worth evolving to eat. It could be a happy accidental source with calories; or it could have been a great source of calories that was the best option at the time, but is no longer.
- thatcat 5y agoOr did plants evolve colored fruit because the plants with colored fruit were recognized most easily and thus spread the most by animals (including humans)?
- kstenerud 5y agoEarlier fruits didn't have anywhere near the sugar content of the cultivated ones today. In fact, many fruits of old were inedible (e.g. apples). Sources of sugar such as sweet fruits and honey were rare delicacies, not daily occurrences. Humans in various regions would have adapted over 1000 generations to better match their environment. We live in a VERY different world now.
- hoka-one-one 5y agoCan you cite some sources please? I've tasted some very sweet wild berries.
- imwillofficial 5y agoThis is big. Highlights: •Glucose and sucrose ingestion led to negative cognitive performances. •Negative effects due to blood glucose increase were more evident with overnight fasting. •Sugar effects on cognitive abilities are likely to be glucose-mediated. •Sweetness perception does not play a role in moderating cognitive performances.
- siltpotato 5y agoSo diet cola doesn't make you dumber?
- esperent 5y agoN=49 Interesting results, but I'd take them with a grain of sugar until they get replicated several times over. Especially since they match my bias that sugar=bad.
- chrisweekly 5y agowordplay on the idiom "take it with a grain of salt" ^ for the sake of non-native speakers I appreciate what you did there.
- disgruntledphd2 5y agoIt's actually even worse than that. I don't have access to the paper, but they had 8 conditions (3 sugars + placebo * fasting|non fasting). That's basically six people per condition. I assume that they did some kind of repeated measures design (although the abstract doesn't say), but the numbers reported are most likely to be statistical noise, especially without preregistration or standard analytical methods.
- sp332 5y agoInteresting, but a later paper that cites this one did not get the same result. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-020-00749-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-020-00749-6
- retypepassword 5y agoI dunno. I’ve only read the abstract [1], but I feel like the second paper was like, “glucose = bad because of glycemic response? Nope!” And the first paper was just like, “glucose = bad” That is, the earlier paper noticed that consuming glucose/sucrose-containing beverages reduced cognitive performance compared to consuming beverages with no glucose, and the later paper was trying to figure out why. And to figure out why, the second paper compared glucose and isomaltulose (glucose-containing saccharides with different glycemic responses) to see whether a sugar’s predicted glycemic response could account for the differences in cognitive performance noticed in the earlier study between beverages with glucose and those without. [1] This second paper’s abstract doesn’t mention glucose vs. no glucose’s effects on cognitive performance like the earlier paper does.
- henearkr 5y agoI think you got it mixed up, because the second paper is not > "glucose = bad because of glycemic response? Nope!” but rather: “glucose = bad because of perceived sweetness? Nope!” There are sweeteners that do not activate insulin (like stevia). I am not aware if the converse exists though (not-sweet-tasting molecules that activate insulin). Their case in the paper is that fructose is not "bad" (like glucose is) despite of being very sweet-tasting.
- retypepassword 5y agoWe might be referring to different “second” papers :) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031938417304328 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00319... is about about perceived sweetness https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-020-00749-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-020-00749-6 is about glycemic response, which I referred to as the second paper Though it could be argued that both papers were trying to figure out why glucose = bad (the first, testing perceived sweetness, and the second, glycemic response)
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- mrandish 5y agoIt's only N=1 anecdata but since going to a VLC/Keto diet I've felt cognitively sharper (in addition to other benefits like losing weight, needing less sleep, etc).
- fatlasp 5y agoI was keto for six months a year or so ago and definitely felt sharper at the time as well. Turns out I like carbs more than clear headedness
- dlkmp 5y agoSame story for me, also went keto for approx. six months and experienced the same benefits but once I started carbs again, those seemingly great benefits loose against the ease of just being able to eat "normally".
- aesh2Xa1 5y agoI've read that keto diets cause brain fog. I searched it quickly and a bunch of results turned up, too. Is keto intended to be a long term diet?
- liversage 5y agoSome would say keto is a way of eating as opposed to a diet that can been seen as a temporary change of eating habits. I've never heard anybody say that keto causes brain fog. In fact a lot of people describes the opposite result which I would think most search results are about. There's also something called "keto flu" which some people experience for some time when they switch to a keto diet. These terms are pretty vague and the best way to get a better understanding is too try keto yourself. It's just a different way if eating. You don't have to cook fancy meals and you can stop at any time.
- wavesquid 5y agoI did keto for 5 months or so back in 2014. I found the brain fog description very apt. I couldn't think beyond a couple of moves ahead, which began affecting my work. Going back to a normal diet I was fine again.
- drfrank 5y agoWhat was "the fasting condition" in the study? They started a fast with sugar? They ended a fast with sugar? What was the interval between the ingestion and the test? How much sugar was consumed?
- armchairhacker 5y agoThey didn't test for fiber and glycemic index. The subjects basically drank sugar vs. sucralose vs. water. There's a big difference between eating/drinking pure sugar and eating a well-balanced meal with carbs. Yeah, the former will make you feel terrible and perform worse. But would the latter really affect you vs. a meal without carbs?
- austincheney 5y agoYou are describing a real world scenario of drinking fruit juice versus eating the equivalent fruit, and the results are stunning. > But would the latter really affect you vs. a meal without carbs? Yes. The body will prioritize sugars, and thus carbs, over fats in both processing and energy extraction. That is problematic in that the rapid processing of sugars produces a result similar to a stimulant drug while consumed fat is just stored without use. Dropping carbs has allowed me to feel focused constantly without need for caffeine and minimizes sensations of hunger.
- phonypc 5y agoI have trouble parsing exactly what you mean here, but it feels like a misunderstanding. Do you think consumed fats just sit ignored in your gut until any carbs are digested? Or that all fats consumed coincident with carbs are necessarily stored in adipose tissue? Both are absolutely not the case.
- austincheney 5y agoYour body must make a choice on what to process because different processes and hormones are involved. Sugars are always preferred because they have a lower cost of execution resulting in higher net energy. That means fats consumed at the same time are either stored or discarded until all sugars are processed. That is ideal when food is scarce, sugars are scarce, and high energy output is frequent. Today high energy output is rarely demanded and sugars are abundant, which results in weight gain and obesity. There is also encoding in the brain that drives a preference for sugar energy. Sugar is more physically addictive than cocaine, for example. A high fat and low sugar (carbs) diet can be harder on the heart but it results a fairly constant body energy without the ups and downs of sugars and stimulants. It also results in weight loss. The body is smart enough to know how much fat it requires from food for energy output and discards excesses, but that body intelligence is confused by exercise.
- PeterStuer 5y agoThe full paper is available on ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321663790_The_sweet_effect_Comparative_assessments_of_dietary_sugars_on_cognitive_performance https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321663790_The_sweet...
- zby 5y agoThe question here is why dietary science is so unreliable? There are so many fads. Every year. Many of them with a base in a peer reviewed paper, but all conflicting with each other. And even reading this comments here: yes keto diet makes me sharp thinking, no actually keto gives 'brain fog', no it is glucose that gives 'brain fog'. It reads like a primary example of some random effects that people interpret to be caused by whatever they currently do. I am all for going to the source and reading scientific articles - but it is hard. And at some point it is important to admit that we are laypersons in such and such area and the fact that we read (and partially understood) a peer reviewed paper might not mean that much because science is too under the pressure of https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood Here is another argument for why reading just one peer reviewed article is not too informative in some health related problems: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/covidvitamin-d-much-more-than-you https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/covidvitamin-d-much-mo... And by they way the abstract of this particular article is a kind of strange: first they admit that "Neuro-cognitive research has confirmed that glucose, as a main energy substrate for the brain, can momentarily benefit cognitive performances, particularly for memory functioning." - so they admit that the effect of glucose is positive and they even say that it is confirmed. Then they go to their own experiment and report "ingestion of glucose and sucrose led to poorer performances on the assessed tasks as opposed to fructose and the placebo" - so the effect here was negative. But they don't even notice that it is the reverse of what they believe was 'confirmed'. The activities were maybe different - but still.
- tudorw 5y agoBecause biopsychoholisticepigenomicgenomicnutrition as a field is only just getting started, food is easily more complicated than brain activity.
- amelius 5y agoYou can get more insight by discarding all studies that were performed in a timeframe of less than a year.
- shlant 5y agoyea when it comes to diet, I think longevity studies can usually provide the most useful insights (although usually pretty generalized). You can do a diet for 5-10 years and not see the ill effects until that far in. Anyone who tries to sell you on a way of eating that has only been done en masse (relatively speaking) for a few years is a bit suspect.
- super_mario 5y agoInteresting, considering the brain can not metabolize fructose, only glucose and ketones. Liver is the only organ that can metabolize fructose, where it ends up producing metabolites very similar to alcohol, leading over time to non-alcoholic fatty liver.