The “healthy eating habit” of Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio) and Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio) is no secret –Â both consume a significant amount of Coca-Cola (KO, Financial) and See’s Candy’s peanut brittle every day. Given the amount of sugar they consume every day, the fact that both are still very healthy and sharp at their respective ages may befuddle many nutritionists. I’m not a health nut myself, but I have always wondered whether there is something about Coke and peanut brittle that get two of the most rational human beings on earth hooked.
I found a speculative and interesting answer in Chapter 3 of the great book "Thinking, Fast and Slow."
"A series of surprising experiments by the psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues has shown conclusively that all variants of voluntary effort – cognitive, emotional, or physical –draw at least partly on a shared pool of mental energy. Baumeister’s group has repeated found that an effort of will or self-control is tiring…The most surprising discovery made by Baumeister’s group shows, as he puts it, that the ideal of mental energy is more than a mere metaphor. The nervous system consumes more glucose than most other parts of the body, and effortful mental activity appears to be especially expensive in the currency of glucose. When you are actively involved in difficult cognitive reasoning or engaged in a task that requires self-control, your blood glucose level drops. The effect is analogous to a runner who draws down glucose stored in her muscles during a sprint. The bold implication of this idea is that the effects of ego depletion could be undone by ingesting glucose, and Baumeister and his colleagues have confirmed this hypothesis in several experiments."
We all know that in the U.S, corn syrups are used as sweeteners in cola. The following excerpt from Coca-Cola explains high fructose corn syrup.
We also know that reading and thinking are both effortful mental activities, which according to Baumeister, appear to be especially expensive in the currency of glucose. Given the level of reading and thinking Buffett and Munger conduct, their mental activities must consume more glucose than ordinary investors, which means they have a greater need to replenish their glucose level. This may explain why Buffett drinks at least five 12-ounce servings of Cherry Coke every day.
Of course there are other ways to consume glucose (Pepsi, Coke, Seven Up). The point is if you read and think a lot every day, maybe you need to drink some Cherry Coke and eat some peanut brittle. This is just a hypothesis. I will carry out this experiment myself in the near future. We will see how this will work out.
