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Comment by duttonw | Hacker News Reader

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There's no polite way of saying this, but I'll say it anyway: most of your comment reads like pseudoscience to me.

> I suggest people pick up the book "Immune: A Journey Into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive 978-0593241318" as it does a much better job at explaining these systems then my short paragraph.

I read that book just a few weeks ago and I don't recall reading anything about the stuff you mentioned.

The book is amazing though.

> When we don't follow a natural cycle of fasting

What does a natural cycle look like? 12 hours? 16 hours? More?

Winter.

All jokes aside, any "natural" fasting would probably be directly related to how much food is available, how perishable it is, and how long it keeps. Late winter and early spring were pretty hard times for folks living in places with 4 seasons (the time of Christian lent, in general). "natural" fasting was likely just a result of food availability.

And recommended and/or normal eating times have changed a lot through history, much as the foods we eat have. And so much of what we "know" is speculation: We can't realistically tell how often or what times any pre-history civilisation ate, for example.

"Winter" refers to an agricultural-age kind of shortage, not a ice-age-mammoth-hunters sort of situation. With most of the planet's humanity having less than 10k years of agriculture under their belt, it's perhaps been not quite as gene-shaping / evolutionary-impactful as the prior 100000-500000 years of mostly-hunting-and-scavenging (plus whatever little actually-edible non-poisonous plant/fungus stuff actual "gathering" outside cultivated-fields of bred-over-millenia varieties could in fact contribute — seasoning or snack-style most likely rather than the dominant/decisive nutriment/calory-package I'd wager).

But then, I'm not an authority on the matter, just yet-another-mildly-temporarily-curious-thread-partaker.

Certainly, hunting doesn't succeed every day or isn't done every day, so there's an assumption that "we evolved" under an alternation of feast-days (a handful) and fast-days (also a handful). I recall someone's napkin-calcs that one cow (not even mammoth), if fully (not just the fine cuts) utilized (and preservible so long), could nourish a single person for almost a year, and even a sheep for some ~3+ weeks. So as a small tribe you need not hunt or succeed every day — and when you really, really feast on fresh meat ad-lib one day, you'll easily be without (substantial) hunger at least for the next 1-3 days. I also heard once (not a scientist in that area either =) that animal predator carnivores don't nibble all the time, they strike and feast big every couple of days, nap it off, then just sorta roam and play.. outside of structured zoo/circus feeding schedules, that is. (Not that we're such a species as lions tigers or pumas, but we might have been closer to that M.O. for a long long time than today or back as tree-hopping primates.)

Probably whatever happens before "breakfast". Basically, don't have a midnight snack.

> Another interesting tidbit is that spinach and other similar foods once consumed in high enough quantities (as little as 1/2 a cup a week) causes little needle (Oxalates) like structures to form in our bodies, this is really bad when its in our joints. And another tidbit is that if you do over consume spinach you can be killed from it.

There is so much pseudoscience in here to unpack. You're picking and choosing anecdotes from different things (oxalate intolerance is a thing but not very common, 1/2 cup of spinach for most people is very healthy) to create a fear inducing narrative.

Yes, folks should watch what they eat, but spewing this garbage just muddies the waters on what could be the root cause for certain ailments.

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