One reason not to skimp on carbohydrate:
pleasanton.k12.ca.usintro.htmlOpen ↗ A big question is: Does the
food you eat really have a significant effect on your cognitive processing and behavioral patterns?
According to Katherine Milton, an anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley, " the
behaviors and physiology that define us are the consequences
of dietary-driven evolution. . . and everything comes back to diet." Milton has spent the last
twenty years on the island of Barro Colorado in Panama, studying howler and spider monkeys. Her
extensive research has resulted in an increased knowledge of the effects of diet in relation to the
productivity of the brain. After many years of observation and analyzation of the monkeys, their
habitat, diet, and physiology she made some astounding discoveries. Even though the two monkeys
shared the same environment and were approximately the same size, they had dramatic differences. The
spider monkeys, whose diet consisted ninety percent from fruits, had more energy, were brighter, and
had larger brains. Milton also found that their digestive tracts were much smaller allowing for
quicker removal of wastes. By eating high energy, hard to find fruits, the monkeys were forced to
memorize more locations of plants, the time of year and day the fruit would ripen, thus forcing
their brains to
expand over time. In contrast, their counterpart, the howler monkey, fed themselves on protein rich
leaves leading to a lack of energy that was needed to fuel the brain. Because of the excess in
protein and lack of carbohydrates the howler monkeys were dull and unobservant. Milton was able to
eat bananas and peanut butter sandwiches in front of the howler's making loud slurping noises, and
the howler's were seemingly oblivious to her action's. The spider monkeys, however, had a much
different reaction. They would attack Milton to get her food, and she quickly learned that eating
could become a hazardous situation because of their attentiveness.
In conclusion, the focal point of our experiment was based on the idea that diet has a direct impact
on the function's of the brain.
-- Thanks to DeVries