A Second Distant Metabolic Gift
An earlier post spoke of a “distant metabolic gift” that people today in rich societies struggle with. For many thousands of years the struggle was to survive winters. So the metabolic systems of humans, like bears and other mammals, worked to quickly gain weight during summer and fall, storing fat as rapidly as possible.
Now in prosperous societies many struggle to slim down in spring to look better outdoors in light summer clothes. What a strange and wonderful transformation! But it’s not so wonderful for many. For the majority in wealthy countries consuming too much food too often and all year round not only adds weight but also damages metabolic systems, leading to heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and a host of other chronic conditions all connected to metabolic syndrome (eye problems, as one example). For research, see: Only 12 percent of American adults are metabolically healthy, study finds (ScienceDaily, November 28, 2018).
So the “gift” of adding fat easily and quickly is now a major challenge for millions. But what was the other “distant metabolic gift”? A look at the reality of the past gives us clues. Henry Hazlitt’s Conquest of Poverty offers a glimpse of the unhealthy and impoverished past:
“In the eleventh and twelfth centuries famine [in England] is recorded every fourteen years, on an average, and the people suffered twenty years of famine in two hundred years. In the thirteenth century the list exhibits the same proportion of famine; the addition of high prices made the proportion greater. Upon the whole, scarcities decreased during the three following centuries; but the average from 1201 to 1600 is the same, namely, seven famines and ten years of famine in a century.”
[Conquest of Poverty, p. 14, online pdf]
Restrictive economic policies can deepen and prolong poverty and starvation, as seen with the 1960s famine in China and the earlier Irish potato famine. Don Boudreaux explains the potato famine, drawing from research by historian Stephen Davies:
After defeating James II in 1690, victorious protestants subjected Catholics – Ireland’s majority population – to cruel restrictions on land ownership and leasing. These policies led most of Ireland’s people to farm plots that were inefficiently small and on which the Irish had no incentives to make long-term improvements. As a result, agricultural productivity in Ireland stagnated, and the high-yield, highly nutritious, labor-intensive potato became the dominant crop. In combination with other discriminatory measures that obstructed Catholics from participating in modern commerce – measures that kept far too large a portion of Ireland’s population practicing subsistence agriculture well into the 19th century – this over-dependence on the potato spelled doom when in 1845 that crop became infected with the fungus Phytophthora infestans.
Starving for Historical Accuracy, Cafe Hayek, December 5, 2012
French historian Fernand Braudel writes of the long history of poverty for most people in most civilizations, hit often by famine and disease:
“Peasants represented immense numbers of people, the vast majority of human beings… constant poverty… For century upon century, clothing remained unchanged… the general rule was changelessness.” In Europe, peasant possessions were generally limited to little more than a shirt, a pair of pants, perhaps a simple jacket, a bench, a table and a straw‐filled sack that served as a mattress. In India, there were hardly any chairs or tables to be found. There were few chairs in Islamic lands. Multitudes perished because of famines — France alone had hundreds of famines before 1800. Famine undermined the ability of people to resist common deadly diseases like typhoid fever, purple fever, whooping cough, sweating sickness, diphtheria, smallpox, influenza, syphilis and the plague.
Why There Is No Human Progress without Capitalism, Cato Commentary, Jim Powell, January 24, 2012
This review of Cormac Ó Gráda Famine: A Short History though critical of Fernand Braudel, also chronicles a long history of famines.
So, enough about death already! Is famine supposed to be a second “metabolic gift”? Well no but yes, sort of. “Let them eat cake!”is attributed to Marie Antoinette in response to being told that French peasants had no bread. Another response could have been, let them fast!
Jay Richards in Eat, Fast, Feast: Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul―A Christian Guide to Fasting (January 7, 2020) notes that fasting plays a significant role in all traditional religions. This podcast interview explains more:
I had the pleasure of interviewing NYT best-selling author Jay W. Richards about his brand new book Eat Fast Feast for this week’s podcast. It’s everything I love and preach about the benefits of feasting and fasting for metabolic flexibility.
48: Eat, Fast, Feast with Jay W. Richards, The Christian Health Club Podcast
In this episode Jay shares how he went from eating every few hours to fasting for days at time. He lays out his six week plan for increasing fasting ability. He explains our history and calling to fast as Christians. This episode will motivate and strengthen your spiritual conviction to incorporate fasting and feasting for Spirit, Mind and Body health.
Fasting for Health and Longevity: Nobel Prize Winning Research on Cell Aging (Blue Zones) reports:
Japanese cell biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2016 for his research on how cells recycle and renew their content, a process called autophagy. Fasting activates autophagy, which helps slow down the aging process and has a positive impact on cell renewal.
What is Autophagy?
During starvation, cells break down proteins and other cell components and use them for energy. During autophagy, cells destroy viruses and bacteria and get rid of damaged structures. It’s a process that is critical for cell health, renewal, and survival.
Japanese Fasting Study Reveals Complex Metabolic Changes in the Human Body (Inverse, January 31, 2019) reports recent research:
In a paper published Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of researchers at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) and Kyoto University revealed some of the effects of fasting, which go way beyond just burning fat. By analyzing the blood of four young, healthy human participants after they fasted for 34 and 58 hours — whoa! — the team found 42 different substances whose levels increase while a person is fasting (as well as two that go down), only 14 of which scientists had previously detected in fasting humans. That means they discovered 30 substances the human body produces in large quantities during fasting that scientists didn’t know about.
Looking back in history, when crops failed and local food was gone, the ability to walk or run to somewhere else was a handy metabolic gift. But how could people run without food? Well, these guys did. They ran 100 miles fasting as a demonstration: UK team completes a 100-mile, five-day run with no food (Diet Doctor, October 1, 2020).
Our bodies suffer trying to survive long-term without adequate nutrition, but we seem equipped to rise to the challenge of making do for a time without food. In fact fasting seems to provide key health benefits.
From Harvard Health: Intermittent fasting: Surprising update (June 29, 2018) on IF (Intermittent Fasting):
IF as a weight loss approach has been around in various forms for ages, but was highly popularized in 2012 by BBC broadcast journalist Dr. Michael Mosley’s TV documentary Eat Fast, Live Longer and book The Fast Diet, followed by journalist Kate Harrison’s book The 5:2 Diet based on her own experience, and subsequently by Dr. Jason Fung’s 2016 bestseller The Obesity Code. IF generated a steady positive buzz as anecdotes of its effectiveness proliferated.
As a lifestyle-leaning research doctor, I needed to understand the science. The Obesity Code seemed the most evidence-based summary resource, and I loved it. Fung successfully combines plenty of research, his clinical experience, and sensible nutrition advice, and also addresses the socioeconomic forces conspiring to make us fat. He is very clear that we should eat more fruits and veggies, fiber, healthy protein, and fats, and avoid sugar, refined grains, processed foods, and for God’s sake, stop snacking. Check, check, check, I agree. The only part that was still questionable in my mind was the intermittent fasting part. …
Between meals, as long as we don’t snack, our insulin levels will go down and our fat cells can then release their stored sugar, to be used as energy. We lose weight if we let our insulin levels go down. The entire idea of IF is to allow the insulin levels to go down far enough and for long enough that we burn off our fat.
The Harvard Health author advocates a plant-based diet, along with IF. For more on Keto friendly vegetables, see this Diet Doctor page: We have something special to announce: the premiere of our 10 best keto vegetables video.
As human beings we have great potential and many gifts. Most of all we can learn and use reason to gain wisdom. The metabolic gift that results in many gaining too much weight should be paired with another gift that helps us keep healthy, think clearly, and live longer. And maybe run a hundred miles if we need to…