picastoc - I saw the series where he experimented with intermittent eating etc. - it is nothing new, goes back into history of mankind when involuntary fasting, called 'hunger' was a fact of life. In the last century there were various writers suggesting we go back to fasting, many religions make fasting a duty, at least before or during some holy days. One of the health writers I am re-reading at the moment is called Paavo Airola who wrote about everything which is still questioned and books are still written about and money is made on them.
One thing that stood out in one of the matters he mentioned about de-natured food really had me thinking - again - and it might even explain the very strange 'New World' we have become.
He says about health and longevity: "they are in a direct relationship to the naturalness of the foods you eat".
He calls a lot of the foods we buy in the supermarket 'denatured foods', and incapable of sustaining health; "denatured foods" - is food grown in depleted soil with the help of chemicals and processed by heat, irradiation or chemical treatment. Example: Eggs laid by hens running outdoors in sunlight and eating grass, seeds, insects and worms - and in the company of roosters! - are natural, fertile eggs, with dark yolks and full, nutritional value. But eggs produced by 'cooped-up" chickens in an 'egg factory', by hens who never see daylight or rooster and are fed only synthetic medicated mash, are not natural eggs. Such eggs are infertile, they will not produce chickens, their yolks are pale, their chemical composition is altered, their vitamin content is low and their total nutritional value is way below that of a natural egg; they also contain twice as much saturated fats as the natural eggs do.
He also writes on bread: 'The American housewife, brainwashed by T.V. commercials, feeds her family 'enriched' white bread, believing tht it will help to build 'stronger bodies in ten different ways'. But in the refining process the white bread has lost 65 to 75% of all the important natural vitamins and minerals, and only a few of them have been replaced with inorganic, synthetic chemical vitamins, that lack the nutritional resemblance to the organic life-factors that were removed.
Scientists who tried to feed test animals a synthetic diet composed of all the nutritive substances known to science, have found that animals could live in seemingly good health and even have reproductive capacity. However, from the second and third generation, animals lost their power to reproduce and their health condition and growth rate were adversely affected by the synthetic diet.
This is completely beside the point of intermittent fasting discussed on here, but same Paavo Airola also writes at length on fasting which I am going to try. I know that NoBoDe tends to not eat for long hours, however he has a tendency towards certain liquid calories, so not a true 'faster', yet I believe he will be granted or has already been granted a health reprieve because of his intermittent eating habits and his good food choices (now that Big Mac are also including a lot of lettuce leaves, onions etc. in their offerings .
Sorry, to stick my nose in this late - but I have been rather busy and missed out on a lot.
Keep well and find those free-range eggs, dear Pica
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