Posted on 02/19/2014 7:52:30 AM PST by rktman
Not at all. It’s changing how you eat more than what you eat. Let me take the concept a bit deeper.
For many years, historians were puzzled with pre-industrialization references to “first sleep” and “second sleep”. Finally they figured out they were literal. That is, people had a very different schedule.
They would start the day with breakfast, often on farms before the sun came up. Then the big meal of the day was dinner, what today we call lunch. Then an hour or so after dusk, before bed, they would eat a lighter supper. Then they would sleep until around midnight.
Then they would get up, use the pot, stoke the fire, prepare breakfast and set it to cook, then go back to sleep.
This all changed with industrialization and illumination at night, to pretty much the schedule we follow today. (Which may explain a lot of sleep disorders, with the theory that people are not really designed to sleep the whole night through.)
In any event, by the earlier schedule, breakfast and supper were not very elaborate, but dinner was the feast of the day, with a morning’s work in front of it, and an afternoon’s work after.
So having the big meal at noon, not in the evening, may be a key to healthier eating. I say may, because there are so many variables.
If I didn’t have to work after noon, I’d go for the big meal then. Unfortunately, it makes me too sleepy to get my nose back to the grindstone.
But it does raise the question how to get a better deal out of how and when we eat. More in tune with out particular metabolism, etc.
Personally, I’m trying to deal with my food at the intestinal flora level. And it is something of a challenge.
To start with, the better the bacteria are at digesting, the more nutrition you get from your food. And some bacteria are known to contribute to weight gain, others to weight loss. But there’s another twist.
Archaea look like bacteria, but aren’t. And they don’t eat what bacteria eat, either. But they do eat bacterial waste gases, that can inhibit bacteria. So indirectly they make it so that bacteria can increase the amount of nutrition we get from our food.
The bacteria genus Enterobacter in particular, are known to cause weight gain. And making things worse for obese people, instead of having 30-40 types of dominant intestinal flora bacteria, about a third of all the bacteria in their gut are Enterobacter.
Indeed it does, and I suspect the answer is slightly different for each and every one of us.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.