Thanks for your notes!
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The OP is clear. The confusion is that I referenced the 90’s and everyone starts thinking I’m comparing nutrition to doping.
No.
Cycling jerseys have had pockets for 100 years and for all of that time, they had food in them on longer rides/races. Its not like in year 2003, some cyclist stumbled on the fact that if you’re pedaling for a couple hours you’ll feel better and go faster longer if you eat stuff.
FWIW PowerBars and Gu gels are 30+ years old and I don’t think they were even the first “on the go” sports nutrition product.
On bike nutrition has gotten easier to consume (e.g. gels vs foil wrapped home made rice cake) over the years and there are more and tastier ways to get calories along with your hydration but on bike nutrition is not even in the top 3 of why folks are faster than 20 years ago.
- Power meters and specifically power based training
- Aerodynamics (wheels, frames and clothing)
- More widespread access to good coaching (see #1)
- Better indoor trainers (see #1 and #3)
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To add a bit of history
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Its called sarcasm 
I’ve been riding and racing for over 40 years. IMHO The 2 biggest drivers of increased performance have been aerodynamics and power meters/power based training with declining bike weight thrown in if hills are involved. Everything else you can think of has played a role (including nutrition) but not the leading role.
I will concede that as you time horizon gets shorter nutrition improvements lume larger as the major aero developments and power meters have been around for a while. So the ranking for the last 10 years vs last 20 vs last 30 might be different.
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How about you defend your position and not attack the other forum members?
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Oh hell…that has been going on for decades!! 
Long are the tales and stories of wearing arm / leg warmers (wool!) on warm days and going out on long solo rides with nothing but a single water bottle for “nutrition”. 
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Ahhh. Running in a garbage bag. So fun.
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“No I’m pretty sure this one Clif bar will get me a solid 90 miles, why do you ask?”
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I’m putting a Mustang V6 in a little, aero, light-weight Mazda Miata (my buddy did it - don’t recommend). Tons of power! Light weight! Should I increase fuel delivery by, let’s say 70%, or just keep the same fuel line and gas tank? 
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Bad analogy.
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Show me, don’t tell me
I got as far as this:
“Scientist Gunvar Ahlborg is credited with the concept of ‘carb loading;”
but could read no further, because that statement is flat-out wrong. The author of the article shows up as “Profile does not exist”, but whomever wrote it clearly didn’t do their homework and is not a reliable source.
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Come on Cog! Take some keytones, fire up the brain and tell me why that’s a bad analogy!
Ketones, not keytones (unless you’re a musician).
Because simply pumping more gas into your gas tank doesn’t make your car faster. To achieve the latter, you need to be able to burn that fuel more quickly.
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Ooops, thanks regarding the “Keytones” - they were a barbershop quartet in the 50’s - Google them - great stuff.
I’m not talking about pumping more gas to the tank, I’m talking about pumping more fuel to the engine. I’ve got a V6, and the oxygen delivery is turbo (EPO?), but in order for this furnace to burn, I need more fuel, and 60g/hr is Miata fuel delivery, and that is a limiter.
Why are you conflating CHO and lipid ingestion? And why are mistakenly assuming that ingesting CHO during exercise reduces glycogenolysis?
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If you don’t ingest sufficient CHO during prolonged exercise, then you may (or may not, depending on intensity, duration, initial liver glycogen stores, etc ) experience hypoglycemia. Are you claiming that “jour sans” was more common 20 y ago?
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Hummm
Sorry, but no. Credit goes to Bergstrom (a nephrologist interested in muscle electrolyte levels) and especially Hultman (an exercise physiologist) (and of course Duchenne, who originally developed the needle biopsy method back in the 1800s).
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0954-6820.1967.tb11504.x
(Yes, I have published on the history of the biopsy method as well:)
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