I can't help but wonder if there was a method to their madness. The brain requires vast amounts of caloric energy to do anything interesting, and maybe all that corn syrup went to good use: solving problems and writing code.
Anecdotally, one of the best programmers I've ever met was bean-pole skinny and fueled himself with a big glass of OJ in the morning, cheeseburgers and fries at every lunch, and eating candy all day while writing code. (Of course, he also got lots of physical exercise).
Fructose is actually poison (not in the sense of "you die now", but in the long term alcohol sense) with almost no energy benefit. The high fructose corn syrup and sucrose (50% fructose, 50% glucose) used in most candy are remarkably inefficient sources of energy. The fructose provides practically zero and although the glucose in sucrose is good, there are better sources for it.
What Lustig doesn't mention is that sugar is what your brain runs on. Eating too much sugar is not good for actual marathons but it works great for coding marathons.
Do you have a source for this? As far as I am aware your brain mostly burns glucose like the rest of your body. Admittedly glucose is also a sugar, but in the context of this talk sugar refers to sucrose (i.e. the white stuff you put in tea) which is 50% fructose, 50% glucose. Which would imply that sugar is still inefficient "brain fuel" compared to other carbohydrates like pure glucose. If you have any sources/references showing me wrong about the brain metabolizing fructose I'd be very interested and grateful if you could point me to it.
Anecdotally, one of the best programmers I've ever met was bean-pole skinny and fueled himself with a big glass of OJ in the morning, cheeseburgers and fries at every lunch, and eating candy all day while writing code. (Of course, he also got lots of physical exercise).
Just a thought.