Why do we eat all the time?
Mr Kelloggs created for the whole of the world the concept that ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’. Funnily enough, I bet you your parents or your school teacher or somebody told you that. Even funnier, Mr Kelloggs sold breakfast cereal. I know, a shock.
We not only eat breakfast straight after waking up, normally, but we also have a mid-morning snack, that’s to keep us going, then we have lunch because it’s important not to skip meals, and then we have more snacks, to keep us perky and full of energy, just in case on a daily basis we are climbing a mountain or swimming the Atlantic ocean, then it’s dinner time, we might even on special occasions have pre-dinner snacks AKA as nibbles, then just before bed, in case we are back to more ocean swimming or mountaineering during the night, we’ll have some supper/snack or something.
The problem with this type of daily activity is manyfold, firstly, we tend to overeat, secondly, it’s costly, and thirdly our body works inefficiently as we are used to constantly receiving energy so the body only ever burns glucose and not our fat reserves and lastly, the planet suffers from our excessive consumption.
If we eat fewer meals in a smaller time window, of say 5-6 hours, we run our bodies leanly. This habit of eating has become fashionably known as ‘fasting’ as if we all are suddenly becoming religious and are starving ourselves.
If we look at other species on the planet, unless they are domesticated pets, they eat infrequently and tend to be lean, unless they carry excess fat in colder conditions or to survive hibernation over the winter.
We do not need to eat often and we would be physically healthier for it. However, the machine that is the commercialised food industry has convinced us otherwise and if we really want to be healthier and save the planet, we’d be better off eating less and less often. It’s not fasting it is normal eating.
Philip Dodson 