Despite the experiment I mentioned, Cahill was convinced the brain needed 130 g of glucose a day. Benjamin Bikman has challenged that assertion, on the grounds that Cahill’s estimate, even though generally accepted, is not based on any known data. He has issued a challenge for anyone to present data showing how much glucose the brain actually needs. So far as I know, no one has yet met Bikman’s challenge.
It has been demonstrated that the brain actually prefers ketones over glucose when it can get them. Georgia Ede says, however, that certain parts of astrocytes are too small to accommodate mitochondria and therefore require glucose. So it is certainly possible that the brain might well need a certain minimum amount of glucose, no matter how abundant the ketones are. But Bikman’s point is that no one has yet produced any data to show that.
What we do know for certain is that the liver is perfectly capable of making whatever amount of glucose we do need (gluconeogenesis), so that dietary carbohydrate is not essential.