Thank you, Richard. Yes, I could not agree more. This is exactly my way of
thinking. For H/Gs who evolved around the equator, there may well have been food
more readily available all year round, but for the many of our ancestors who
migrated north, and evolved to thrive in a seasonal environment, periods of
food scarcity undoubtedly existed. Those who adapted better to a feast/famine
sort of regimen would have been more likely to survive to pass on their genes to
us. It seems that all those years of advising us to eat every 2 or 3 hours
throughout the day might have been very misguided advice. It falls right in with
the Government's grain based food pyramid, as far as I'm concerned!

Looking further into the seasonal availability of food, it makes sense that
the foods available for frequent munching, many higher in carbohydrates such as
fruits, would only have been available during Summer and early Fall. I
suspect that most foods available during the colder months of the year would have
been animal foods, and perhaps some of the more easily stored foods such as
nuts/tubers. I can imagine a scenario whereby a large animal was killed, providing
food for gorging for the tribe for a few days, followed by a period of
enforced fasting when little or no foods were available.

For me personally, this thinking has evolved into an attempt to follow an EOD
fasting/eating regimen. It is difficult, to be sure, and I don't always
succeed. But on nearly every day, if I don't fast totally, I now try to eat all my
food within a few hour period, and I find I feel much better, the longer the
periods of fasting between meals.

Maddy Mason
Hudson Valley, NY

In a message dated 2/25/2004 12:44:29 PM Eastern Standard Time, Richard
Geller <[log in to unmask] writes:

Maddy Mason, Accord, NY wrote:
>
> A new mouse study suggests fasting every other day can help fend off
diabetes
> and protect brain neurons as well as or better than either vigorous exercise
> or caloric restriction. The findings also suggest that reduced meal
frequency
> can produce these beneficial effects even if the animals gorged when they
did
> eat, according the investigators at the National Institute on Aging (NIA).
------------
Very good post, Maddy. . . . From a paleo perspective, I can understand that
H-Gers would be hungry for awhile, eating very little or nothing, then would
gorge on protein and fat. So I can see how we could be adapted to eating this
way