I bet just about everyone has heard about fasting before, especially intermittent fasting.

Most experts out there justify fasting by saying, “it’s how it was back in the day.”…”You go out on an empty stomach, hunt, kill the animal and then come back and have brunch. Intermittent fasting!! So you must do it too right?

But please tell me, how is that natural? Where is the evidence for that?

If a tribe didn’t have food, they would overthrow their chief because he’s a bad leader who’s starving his tribe. If a leader couldn’t provide for his tribe, he was a bad leader and wasn’t fit to lead because it was a big part of his duty to always keep food supplies in check.

Also, after a hunt, what did they do with the extra meat? They dried it out. When can you eat dried meat? At any time of the day.
So did they do intermittent fasting or did they preserve food and snack on that in the mornings and on days they didn’t hunt? Absolutely. Did they do intermittent fasting? No. And they didn’t just have dried meat, they also dried and preserved fruits, vegetables, herbs and other plants that they could eat during the day.

Meat was only a part of their food supply, maybe a big part, but it was still only a part and to think and claim that tribes fasted only because they had to get more meat is totally absurd.

No tribe ever hunted on a daily basis. They hunted, killed a bunch, and then preserved the meat that remained.

The indigenous “Busmans” (Bushmen in English) of Southern Africa are a good example of this as they still live and hunt the same ’till this day. They hunt regularly (not everyday), but even on their hunting days they have dried meat and/or dried fruit with them and often even have a raw tuber along the way. They also, usually always, have goats that live with them. They mainly serve as a source for milk but they always keep a few Billy goats around in case they need the meat.

Similarly, if you look at farmers in the olden days (when going to town wasn’t a regular thing and they also needed to hunt); they always had food available. Foods like grains and tubers and even fruits can be stored for a long period of time in the right conditions. Plus, if you ferment the foods, they can stay right for up to a year if not longer. And these are all methods which our ancestors started.

When did people not eat? When they were sick. Do you want to eat if you’re feeling off? Usually no.

So if you had food available year long and all day long, would you do intermittent fasting?
Few people would. Similarly, people in the olden days would only fast if they didn’t have food available, not because they wanted to or because it was natural. Seriously.

The only time people wouldn’t have food available is if there was a natural catastrophe and the farmer’s fields washed away in a storm or dried up due to a lack of rain, or all the buffalo died because of some obscure reason, but even then, there would still be alternatives because they were always prepared for such unfortunate events.

So could everyone just stop with the intermittent fasting/fasting is “natural” and “normal” nonsense. It really isn’t, so quit fooling yourself.

But on a different note, fasting, not intermittent fasting, can be very useful in restoring health, but assuming that it’s normal and natural for everyone, even to those that are not sick, to fast on a regular basis is a faulty and incorrect belief.