Let’s Give a Break to Snacking

With spring break approaching, most of us are getting ready to enjoy a couple of weeks munching on our favorite snacks, watching our favorite TV shows, and waiting until this semester can finally meet its end. Appealing as it may be, this might not be the best for us. 

As scientists tell us, the ancient humans were hunters and gatherers. They didn’t have refrigerators to store their food, nor did they have supermarkets they could drive to in order to obtain their food. So these humans had to spend time hunting for animals, gathering the nuts, berries, and roots that they had learned wouldn’t poison them. That meant that sometimes they had to go for long periods without food, sometimes for days. But this didn’t become their downfall because these humans had developed metabolic pathways that allowed for their bodies to store long-term energy and enter a survival mode they could subsist on. Their bodies knew how to live without food and how to store food when they did find it. They did this through what we call intermittent fasting. 

The practice of intermittent fasting dates back to tens of thousands of years ago and was an intrinsic part of almost every culture and every religion in antiquity. People would set a lengthy period of the day where they would abstain from food, perhaps from midnight to three in the afternoon, and then eat one moderate meal or two light meals. That was it. Sometimes when they were fasting more fervently the period of time would extend from midnight to five or six in the evening. 

Nowadays fasting has a religious and spiritual connotation. Of course, this is not without reason; religion is largely responsible for keeping fasting alive in modernity. It is the countries that are more religious, such as those in the eastern parts of the world, that have major fasting cultures. In Islam, the Ramadan fast is a month long fast where believers abstain from food until sundown. In the stricter practices of Judaism, the celebration of the Sabbath is conducted through a fast as well as during the celebration of Yom Kippur . In the eastern practices of Christianity, particularly Orthodoxy, there are several periods of fasting set in the year where believers abstain from food until 3 PM. In fact the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which I am a member of, there are 250 days where a believer fasts. I’m sure you’ve done the math…there are more fast days than there are regular ones. 

But in antiquity, fasting wasn’t just a religious activity. Anyone and everyone fasted, whether you were a commoner, or whether you were Cicero, or Marcus Aurelius, and life was healthier that way. To be clear, there were feast days as well, where people ate more than usual. But there were always more fast days. Despite the lack of medicine and the various modern inventions that increase lifespan, the fasting culture resulted in a population of people that didn’t have heart or metabolic problems, less disease in general, and had more physical energy.

We can’t say the same nowadays. Heart disease and cancer are the number one and two leading causes of death in America, 42% of the adult population suffers from obesity, and about 10% of Americans have type 2 diabetes. With the most information on human biology, the best technology, and living in a first world country, you’d think we’d have better numbers. But the fact is that contrary to taking a step forward from our ancestors, we’ve taken a step backwards. 

Part of this comes from the misinformation that the food industry and health experts disseminated starting in the 20th century. They began preaching about the evils of fat, and how consumers should stay away from fat. Setting aside the fact that the now outdated food pyramid was never actually tested and had financial benefits for U.S agricultural products that the USDA wanted to be sold (I’m not trying to write an exposé), let’s just say that they were wrong. 

For the vast majority of people residing in modern western society, our eating culture is very snack-friendly. We get up in the morning and the first thing we do is eat. We whip up some eggs, some sausage, maybe some waffles, and wash it down with some juice. Then perhaps an hour or two later, we eat a couple Nature Valley bars with a morning smoothie. Then we eat lunch, probably a nice sandwich with a salad, and then a snack two hours later, those trader joe’s corn chips we were talking about, and then dinner comes around, and then maybe we stay around for a nice midnight snack washed down with some milk. That adds up to around three meals and three snacks, a total of 6 different times we’re eating. Sometimes people might skip a meal and substitute in two snacks, (probably worse), adding up to seven different times we eat. 

It seems harmless. Maybe we are eating a moderately healthy diet. It’s not like we’re living off of burgers and pizzas. The problem only ensues once you realize that your stomach can only wait two hours before it’s hungry. It might not be a monster growl, but our stomachs have been trained to expect food, to crave food at every small interval of the day. Perhaps in this era of abundance that might not be a cause for practical concern. But it’s worth noting that it isn’t normal, nor natural.

The lowfat nonsense that people flocked to in the 80s and in the decades succeeding was never effective. The morning cereal was never healthy, nor was the drastic increase of carbohydrates in our diet. In fact, the result was that it hooked people into an already built-in addiction to sugar, which made people’s bodies shut off their long term energy metabolism, making them rely on short-term energy. 

This is why people snack and graze at an unprecedented rate. The refined wheat and flour we find everywhere exacerbates the situation. Our bodies rely on the incoming flow of glucose and fructose and it gives it boosts of pleasurable energy, which quickly go away. The result is that the fat we eat never gets a chance to be used and gets tucked away as the blubber most of us carry around. 

It’s also why despite the various benefits of intermittent fasting, most of us wouldn’t be able to go cold turkey and start fasting, unless you came from an eastern family or you were a member of an eastern religion. Our bodies go into a kind of withdrawal. There are a lot of diets out there that try to bring the body into a state where it can practice intermittent fasting with relative ease. There’s keto, atkins, paleo diet, and other diets with a similar objective. The point is, and Dr. Monique Tello of Harvard Health Publishing makes it crystal clear: “Avoid sugars and refined grains… let your body burn fat between meals… don’t snack.”

Now there might be some of us that might not have the common grazing urges and live a healthy life. “What does intermittent fasting do for me?” you might say. Well, the benefits of intermittent fasting aren’t just preventative, meaning they don’t just stop bad things from happening, but can cause good things. 

Studies show that intermittent fasting affects our hormones and our cellular activity. It positively affects the growth hormones we have which can lead to muscle growth. This should ease the fear that intermittent fasting would lead to the shedding of muscle. When properly used fasting does the reverse. 

Secondly, intermittent fasting leads to increased autophagy, which is when cells get rid of their waste. It also can increase growth of nerve cells. This has been linked to improving memory and decreasing chances of alzheimer.

Thirdly, intermittent fasting can increase BDNF, which is a neurotrophic factor. Low levels of BDNF can be linked to some of the biological causes of depression. So intermittent fasting can also help with mental health and with your general mood. 

Finally, as we looked from the historical perspective, and as the science shows, intermittent fasting generally increases your lifespan. 

So it’s no surprise why some of your favorite actors, television personalities, and even athletes are doing intermittent fasting on a regular basis. It’s a time tested lifestyle and that has benefited our species for thousands of years. 

Maybe you’re not ready to let go of snacking altogether. Maybe despite the realization that the innocent looking box of bars might have been the product of a capitalistic agenda to hook consumers—they still taste delicious. That’s ok. You can set two or three days of the week where you practice intermittent fasting and then enjoy the other five days. Maybe one or two months later it might be five days of intermittent fasting and two days of snacking. You’ll find that there are some unexpected things you notice about yourself as you begin the journey (like the food tastes twice as good after a fast). The point is that perhaps it’s time for us as a society to revisit fasting as an opportunity to overcome the modern problem of abundance and comfort, and to consider a life of learning to limit ourselves.