People who diet are profoundly stupid, says BBC. Ok, that’s unfair. What the BBC actually says is that Thinking ‘drains the brain’ – essentially of glucose, and extraordinarily quickly. Traditionally, it has been thought that as long as you have food in your system then the energy supplies to your brain will remain essentially consistent. But this article suggests that when under particular mental stress, individuals can literally use up all the glucose incredibly quickly.
This may explain geek fetish foods high in caffeine and sugar. I know that I can go on mad obsessive intellectual kicks when interested and doped up on regular doses of Coca-Cola – although it hasn’t done my teeth much good. And of course the corrollary of all this (and it is specifically stated) is that: “thinking became slower when blood sugar levels were down” – meaning people on diets are just not the sharpest tools in the box.