[costcopizza]

This falls into the category of "things I didn't know, but I assumed anyway."

I don't know why the brain and body are still presented as being so distant-- it's all one system!

If you're treating your body poorly, how is that not going to negatively effect the most important and complex organ of said body?

[azeirah]

Yeah that makes sense, but since the body is a complex system, it _would_ be possible that something like the following is going on. This is fictional, but _could_ be true, if we didn't know otherwise.

Your body prioritizes certain organs and bodily functions over others, depending on the resources that it gets. Who knows, perhaps when the body recognizes that it's not getting enough of a certain vitamin, it will change how it distributes the vitamin throughout the body. Now, because of evolutionary reasons, a function evolved that when the body recognizes the brain is getting too little of a certain vitamin, it takes a larger portion of what _is_ coming in, to make sure that the brain functions properly so it can solve the issue of poor diet, making a cut elsewhere in the body.

Of course, this is utter bullcrap, but it _could_ have been true.

Though, I'm completely with you, this is something I always assumed as well.

[tmikaeld]

I think this has much to do with commercial interests.. if there where a higher stigma around the actual cognitive effects of junk-food and sugar it could generate fewer sales.

A fitting Terrance McKenna quote:

We do not think of ourselves as a meat/sugar/alcohol culture. People do not walk around saying "Oh wow, I'm so high on meat, alcohol and sugar!" but they ARE!

[mtberatwork]

My takeaway from Michael Pollan's books was that we are essentially a corn culture, but a "meat/sugar/alcohol culture" works too I suppose.

[zeroer]

> the most important

The most important organ, eh? Consider the source of that information. ;)

[kenjackson]

This assumes that overeating is bad for the body. We know it is because did is readily available, always. But in a world where did may go away for weeks at a time this overeating may be optimal and hence good for the brain too.