How to keep a sharp focused mind, or How sugar makes you stupid

When designing Embedded Systems it is important to keep your mind sharp and focused.

A recently published study: 'Metabolic syndrome' in the brain: deficiency in omega-3 fatty acid exacerbates dysfunctions in insulin receptor signalling and cognition [PDF] shows that a high-fructose diet sabotages learning, memory.

Eureka Alert sums up the study in plan English as:

New study shows that a high-fructose diet makes you stupid, significantly inhibiting your brain's ability to learn and remember.

"Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think," said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage."

Do you think this perhaps this a conspiracy by 'Them' to keep us "Dumbed Down", as it is found in most off-the-shelf foods and drinks?

Personally I cut sugar out of my diet a long time ago, and became an avid reader of food ingredient labels, and feel a lot better for it.

Be warned, if you try to remove sugar from your died, you will soon discover just how addictive this substance in the typical diet really is, as I know first hand from when I stopped being a Doughnut Junkie. It was a miserable few weeks when I decided to go Cold Turkey on sugar. Once it is out of your system for a while, it does not take much for you to feel the effects, like all of your muscles starting to ache, of eating something that you did not expect to have sugar in it.

Always keep in mind you are what you absorb, no mater how good this poison to the mind tastes going down...