Should We All Engage In Intermittent Fasting?

Just found your blog. Very interesting, lots to think about. My little primal one (he’s 7) has been leading us down the low-starch path, so I’m looking into it now. (He won’t eat potatoes, corn, rice, whole grains, dairy etc. A good meal for him is salad and a hamburger patty or piece of salmon). I try to avoid processed foods (they make me feel like crap), and try to buy local seasonal foods. I think this is the thing most primal folks had in common: they ate what was available to them. And yes, there were periods of time when not much was available at all! I’m so glad you said that. This wasn’t just hunter-gatherer either. Foods stored up by agrarians ran out by the end of winter too. Think “Lent”.

But I have to say, I don’t think this was random. Not even for Paleo folks. People were very aware of their natural environment, when certain plants would be good for harvesting, and so on. They planned their year accordingly. I’ve picked up some books about how our local hunter-gatherers used to live, what local foods they used to eat, and so on, because I find it really fascinating. And they definitely knew when and where to hunt and harvest. And they would store foods, smoke meat and fish and so on. And they knew they would go hungry at certain times of the year. And there were many, many taboos surrounding food, especially animal foods. Very ritualistic, to ensure a continuous supply from one year to the next. They would not over harvest. They would only fish when the salmon were running. They NEVER hunted in the spring when deer were having there babies. The hunt (among California Indians, anyway, from what I’ve read), was highly ritualistic. Only men hunted. They made their own bow and arrows from certain woods (Wouldn’t let women touch them), abstained from eating any meat and generally fasted (except acorn gruel) for several days, abstained from sex, went to the sweat lodge, said prayers, etc before hunting. NOT too”random”, huh? They also gave meat prime importance, because it involved taking a life and consuming something of the animals spirit. They never ate bear meat, because bears ate humans. Anyway, it’s really interesting how people wove their lives into their environments. They also adapted. But life, fasting, eating and harvesting (they stored and harvested acorns for the entire year, and that was their staple food), and it was not random. They knew when they would be hungry (usually early spring – couldn’t hunt, couldn’t fish, acorn supplies running low, not much growing yet…) and they planned accordingly.

I think the notion of a pre-industrial diet is interesting. I also think their is a lot to learn about how hunter-gatherers really lived. It was much more complex then “random” fasting, or random anything. None of us would be here if that were the case! It also means a much more wholisitc stewardship and relationship with out environment. I started harvesting seaweed this year. You need to follow the moon, the tides, the seasons, etc. It’s complex. It’s not just going to the store.

As far as statistics, I don’t have any but I doubt it it is not at all close. People are still starving to death around the world. What we have, we take from someone else. We waste an appalling amount of food while people go hungry. Obesity in the west is epidemic, but it causes long term, chronic ailments that end up killing people, so it’s hard to label. But still, it’s recent. Millions of people have died of hunger throughout history, and many still today. We are very lucky we can niggle so much about food philosophies, when others can’t even eat.