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Comment by sidsavara | Hacker News Reader

I wrote an article regarding dopamine as well, I saw a couple recently on HN on the subjects of dopamine and self discipline, if you guys are interested. Much more in depth than the articles I've seen make it onto HN - but I didn't really think this was the appropriate place for them, that's why I never submitted them. Kind of off topic IMO, but for readers who like it here they are:

Dopamine, rewards, pleasure center of the brain -> http://sidsavara.com/personal-development/personal-developme...

Willpower research -> http://sidsavara.com/personal-development/will-power-how-to-...

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Very good article, Sid. An out of subject note, though: You say "High fat, high sugar foods were not a part of our natural environment". I keep reading statements like this and always make me wonder: was it really so difficult for our ancestors to find ripe bananas?

Bananas don't have very many calories for their volume - somewhere between 80 and 200 depending on who you source for nutrition data. Same for grapes, apples, etc. There are only a few fruits that are really concentrated without processing.

Similarly, most meats in the wild are fit and lean, and you don't get concentrated fats(butter, cheese, cooking oils, etc.) either, leaving nuts as the largest likely fat source.

That doesn't mean that our new food sources are invalid, but one has to be aware that they're recent inventions, evolutionarily speaking, and deserve "occasional" use vs. "staple" status. Which is unfortunate considering that almost everything manufactured involves a concentration - "vegetable oil" (mostly soy and corn) appears all over, processed grain products are commonplace, and most of the items not using the first two are dosed with some combination of dairy fat, salt, and sugar. Between just those few ingredients, you can find the stimulating factors of almost everything on the market.

Thanks chipsy, I think you answered the question perfectly =)

To expand, bananas may be relatively high sugar/energy compared to other natural foods (green vegetables), but they cannot compare with the super concentrated foods we have created such as Twinkies =)

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