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Comment by porknubbins | Hacker News Reader

So this is potentially support for all the parents who say sugar causes behavior changes in their kids right? Another win for trusting anecdotal evidence you personally observe over the ivory tower “we have no evidence that…” as a way to live because biology at least is very complex.

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That is WW2 propaganda used to justify sugar rationing. The behavior changes are a learned response because their parents have trained them that acting up is an expected outcome from sugar consumption.

Do you have any kids? It was obvious that mangoes and apples were causing our toddler to bounce off the walls.

That's hogwash. They are just kids.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324896

to the downvoters: sugar rush is a myth. If you want to believe in food astrology you're free to do so, but you're WRONG.

I think you might be selectively sampling things. I.e. you notice when your toddler is hyperactive after eating fruits but not when he or she is hyperactive after eating other foods.

When it comes to a sugar rush, potatoes, rice, and corn have a significantly higher glycemic index than oranges, apples, and mangos (potatoes are about twice as high). This means that potatoes and corn will more quickly spike your toddler's blood sugar levels quicker and to higher levels. Does your toddler get more hyperactive after eating potatoes or rice or corn?

Hypothesis:

It may not have anything to do with blood sugar. The effects are usually too immediate for any sugar digestive action to have occured besides actual mastication.

I have kids, and my experience perfectly matches the empirics on this one: There is no such thing as a sugar high. You may just have a wrong perfection of the "normal" state of you kid. The "hyperactive" version of your kid is just the normal way your kid behaves. What you observe if the blood sugar level of your kid wanes is fatigue, nor calmness.

Edit: I can also see this with aquaintances who also believe in sugar highs: They only report this for the sugars perceived as worse than the "healthy" sugar sources, e.g. they project a sugar high if the kid gets a piece of cake, but not if it drinks 300ml of undiluted apple juice.

I*ve seen kids bounce off the walls because they were going to watch their favorite movie, too. Or get to play a game. Or... Well, anything, really.

Isn't bouncing off walls just a thing kids do?

The opposite, sugar industry colluded for decades to cover up its harmful effects.

Since 4 months old, our son bounced off the walls when given sugary fruits like banana and orange. With a mood crash an hour or two later.

I do not mean to invalidate your experience, but generally speaking it seems like both no and yes to sugar rush/sugar crash.

"Double-blind trials have shown no difference in behavior between children given sugar-full or sugar-free diets, even in studies specifically looking at children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or those considered sensitive to sugar. A 2019 meta-analysis found no positive effect of sugar consumption on mood but did find an association with lower alertness and increased fatigue within an hour of consumption, known as a sugar crash." [0] [1] (emphasis mine)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions#... (yes, I know.) [1] http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/115618/1/WRAP-Sugar-rush-crash-met...

Sounds like typical spike-and-crash style diabetic response to me.

Yes, I am diabetic.

That was my thought exactly though with younger kids this can be less simple due to size and response times of different parts of the digestive system. Though raising the blood sugar levels of non diabetic even by a few mmol/l can have significant effect where diabetics can have far larger swings an notice it less.

TBH, I don’t notice when my blood sugar is high. I only notice it when I crash. That’s why I’m trying to get better about using a CGM to keep a closer eye on my blood sugar, even though I’m not on insulin. My hope is that the CGM can help me notice patterns in my diet that I can then change, so that hopefully I never end up needing insulin. But this is a work in progress.

You gave a 4 month old sugary fruits? I thought you have to wait for 6mo for dietary diversification.

You wait as long as seems reasonable for you. It's your child after all, they're all different.

It can be true that it was WWII propaganda and a learned behavior exacerbated by parents signaling and there is a biological reaction to sugar. I don’t have kids so just know what I hear, but if sugar is affecting the vagus nerve that could affect behavior.

As many studies clearly point it the opposite direction, isn't it way more probable that parents whish for their kids to be more calm than their default state actually is? Kids are usually pretty active and in demand of attention, while parents of young kids are usually sleep deprived and stressed out. The energy level of your average satiated toddler simply is staggeringly high.

We know from practically every field of human behaviour that even experts, when not guided by strict predefined rules, are simply unable to objectively assess social situations. E.G. in educationals settings, even experienced teachers sensitized for the topic are usually unable to correctly observe how their praise-punishment ratio is or the ratio of interacting with boys/girls or with loud and quiet students.

It simply isn't reasonable to assume that parents, completely untrained in objectively evaluating these kinds of settings, assess the effects of sugar consumption correctly.

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