This is your brain on doughnuts

Normally, I really dig MSNBC's The Body Odd blog with all its "strange news on the wonderfully weird human body and the medical curiosities that make you go huh, eww or ouch!" But today? Not so much. After my morning surf check, I sat down to a day of nerding to find this headline: "Coffee and doughnuts may give a brain boost." Wow! That's a dangerous claim! But I know I can count on this venerable American news institution to be on the ball, so let's see what "strange" science backs it up!

As it turns out, again with the "not so much." Here's the lead:

Leave it to Spanish researchers to discover that caffeine and glucose -- found in those longtime office favorites, coffee and doughnuts -- actually make you smarter.

In a study published in the journal Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental, researchers at the University of Barcelona discovered that the caffeine-glucose combo boosts your brain in terms of attention and memory. And here we thought that stuff was bad for us. D’oh!

Ha ha ha! "We thought that stuff was bad for us!" Ho ho! "D'oh!" Champagne comedy! The only problem is, that's not what the study said. Here are the details from the actual abstract:

Seventy-two healthy subjects (36 women; age range 18–25) were tested early in the morning, having fasted overnight. Using a double-blind, randomised design, subjects received one of the following beverages: water (150 ml); water plus 75 mg of caffeine; water plus 75 g of glucose; water plus and 75 mg of caffeine and 75 g of glucose. Attention, manual dexterity, visuo-spatial and frontal functions, memory (immediate, consolidation and working) and subjective state were all assessed.

So, the coffee part is accurate. 75mg is the amount of caffeine you'll find in a weak cup o' joe. However, it's important to keep in mind that means black coffee - and to my knowledge, there are only three people in the United States who take their morning coffee black: Me, Steve Edwards, and whichever smart-ass comments here first asserting she doesn't add junk to her coffee.

(I say "she" because 90% of the people who comment on this blog are women. I don't know why, they just respond to me. It's a curse, really.)

Anyway, so we're assuming you don't add cream to your coffee, we're good there. Now for the doughnut.

Glucose is sugar, yes. It's a carbohydrate, which we all know is the body's primary source of energy. And yes, doughnuts have sugar in them, but guess what else has sugar in it? EVERY SINGLE FRUIT AND VEGETABLE ON THE PLANET.

And, if you want to get technical, here are the nutrition facts for a Krispy Kreme Glazed Cruller: Calories: 240. Calories from fat: 126. Fat: 14g (3g saturated). Carbs: 26g (1g fiber, 14g sugar). Protein 2g.

So, in truth, only half the calories come from carbs and half of those are sugar. If you wanted to get the 75g of carbs (let's not even bother with differentiating between complex and simple carbs), you'd need to eat three doughnuts, which means 720 calories, 43g of fat (9g saturated), 30% the RDA for sodium, almost no vitamins or minerals (18% the RDA for iron and 6% for calcium. That's it.), and a bad stomachache. Personally, I'd barf.

Furthermore, you'll note that the subjects were fasting previous to their cocktails, which means the caffeine and glucose rushed in super-fast. 43g of fat is going to slow things down a little. If you wanted that much sugar that fast, your best bet would be to put 19 teaspoons of sugar in your coffee, but if you seriously need me to tell you why this would be a bad idea, I think we need to part ways at this point.

In truth, the only thing this study proved is that, in the same way a car needs gas to function, a human body needs food to function. The people thought better when they ate. So the important thing to be learned is that if you skip breakfast, it'll work against you in the odd event that you have a job that actually requires you to think.

But you don't need doughnuts to do that. Admittedly, "Coffee and a balanced breakfast may give a brain boost" probably wouldn't have gotten as many hits for The Body Odd and it's not that odd, really, so they'd have to save this study for their other blog, The Body No Duh. But they didn't. In any other decade, I would have laughed at MSNBC's little pleasantry and moved on to other business, but in this era of skyrocketing obesity, telling Americans that sugary confections will make them smarter is like handing out C4 at a Unibomber convention.

Boom!