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All vegetables we eat have toxins in them and it's precisely these toxins that benefit most of us when eaten periodically. Eaten daily, vegetable meals are probably unhealthy, just as eating meat daily is probably unhealthy. Mediterranean peoples figured this out a long time ago and expressed these findings in religious rituals and texts, with designated feasting and fasting periods, where a feast means lots of meat and cheese and wine, while a fast means humble meals consisting of bread and vegetables and water.

I'd imagine Northern Europeans would benefit from a similar arrangement, though they're likely better adapted to a different periodicity of feasting and fasting, given the climate and the longer periods where fresh food is unavailable.



of course - gotta get fasting into this fad diet thread


A several-thousand year-old diet is not a fad. This is the ancient expression of fasting, not a modern brand like intermittent fasting.


These same ancient diet experts did things like bloodletting. The ancients aren’t always rational.


Bloodletting is a valid medical procedure for hemochromatosis which presently affects around 1 in 200 of those with European ancestry. It's very possible the incidence rate was greater in the past when populations were more locally homogeneous.

It's exceptionally lazy and unimaginative to dismiss out of hand a procedure practiced globally for thousands of years.


What about divination? Water wishing? Human sacrifice? All practice for a long time to no effect. People are highly superstitious and rarely logical.


calling it "ancient" and putting it in italics doesn't change the reality


Ancient is what it is and fad is what it is not. That's the reality.




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