Human Performance 360 Episode 05 | Nutrition as Performance Science: From Athletes to Executives (Podcast with Dr. Marion Nestle, World-Leading Scholar in Nutrition and Food Systems)

Human Performance 360 Episode 05 | Nutrition as Performance Science: From Athletes to Executives (Podcast with Dr. Marion Nestle, World-Leading Scholar in Nutrition and Food Systems)

From Professor P with Dr.Peykar by Parsa Peykar

March 7, 2026 · 37 min · Episode 115

About this episode

This episode explores how nutrition impacts human performance, decision-making, and emotional control.

What if the quality of your decisions, your leadership capacity, and your emotional control were shaped not just by mindset—but by metabolism? In this episode of Human Performance 360, we explore a powerful but often overlooked truth: human performance is biological before it is psychological. Every strategic decision, every moment of focus, and every emotional response is powered by the brain’s metabolic systems. And those systems depend directly on how we fuel the body. Your brain represents only about two percent of your body weight, yet it consumes roughly twenty percent of your daily energy. Cognitive clarity, impulse control, decision making, and emotional regulation all rely on stable energy delivery to the brain—primarily through glucose metabolism, oxygen supply, and neural efficiency. When that fuel becomes unstable, performance declines. Research in neuroscience and behavioral physiology shows that fluctuations in blood glucose can impair attention, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control. Poor sleep—often influenced by alcohol consumption, late-night eating, or poor nutritional habits—reduces activity in the prefrontal cortex, the very region…

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