Fish and vegetables

Diet as medicine

In antiquity, doctors would try to cure the ailments and diseases of people by prescribing a certain diet or a specific fasting regiment. The ancient concepts of both the conditions and the restoration factors of bodily health were still kept throughout the entire Middle Ages. When it came to curing a physical ailment, the protocol was mainly all about diet and applying the medicinal effects of natural herbs.

Only with the rise of the modern natural sciences and technologies did we change the paradigm: No longer trying to cure the root cause of our disease – of our unease – by natural means but rather numbing the symptoms with chemical substances produced by pharmaceutical companies.

Granted, that is a bit of a simplification. Undeniably, modern medicine has brought along many advantages: We can save and prolong lives through various imaging methods that allow for taking a look inside the body in pursuit of an early and correct diagnosis of health issues; through advanced – and increasingly less invasive – surgeries; anti-biotic and other pharmaceutical drugs; and a better understanding of how certain methods of hygiene can reduce the load of pathogenic germs.

But it is a downside that we have lost the basic – and very common sense – understanding of how our daily diet affects our immediate well-being and our long-term bodily health.

To a certain extent we are what we eat. Our body can only metabolize what we feed him. He needs food basically for two things: as fuel (to provide the energy necessary to keep every cell working) and as nutrient resources – as building material for all our cells, tissues, organs, and the various hormones and neurotransmitters that regulate our complex and very fine-tuned physiological, biochemical and neurological cycles.

And so diet has effects on the physical health and performance of our body, as well as on our mood, concentration, processing capacity, and behavioral disposition.

Any time we notice certain abnormalities in one of these areas – whether it is body pains or a disordered mood, or a lack of motivation and mental focus – we could therefore ask ourselves: How and what did I eat in recent days / weeks / months? Should I maybe change something?

How our metabolic system works

Metabolism is a term derived from the Greek verb metaballein which means “to change“. Our body has the ability to transform the substances in our diet to whatever he needs in terms of fuel and building materials.

The process by which our body resorbs the various elements of our food intake – carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals – is called digestion. Different enzymes are needed for this resorption process. They are catalysts for the biochemical reactions that split the nutrients into smaller pieces which then can be transported, stored, and re-used for genesis – for the production of new compounds.

The nutrients in our diet, and how our body makes use of them

Through digestion, proteins – very long and complex chains of amino acids – get split into smaller chains (polypeptides) and basic amino acids.

Polysaccharides – long chains of carbohydrates – are turned into disaccharides (e.g. maltose) or monosaccharides (e.g. glucose).

Triglycerides (90 percent of our fat intake) and phospholipids and cholesterol (10 percent) are broken down into smaller fatty acids. We call these three – proteins, carbohydrates, fats – macronutrients.

The following table gives you some hints about what they are needed for:

Vitamins are very important nutrients that our body cannot produce on his own. They need to come to us through our diet. An exception is Vitamin D, as the body generates it when we get enough sunlight, yet only then.

Some vitamins – like vitamins A, D, E, and K – are lipophilic, which means that they can only be resorbed solved in fat. Other vitamins – like B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin), B6, B12, C, H (biotin), folic acid and some more – are hydrophilic, solvable in water.

Minerals (potassium, sodium, calcium, chlorine, phosphor, sulfur, and magnesium) are electrolytes that are essential to very basic mechanisms of physiological and neurobiological processes in our body.

Alongside minerals certain trace elements (for example iron, iodine, selenium, zinc, and others) are indispensable for us. Here is a quick overview on our body‘s usage of some important micronutrients:

Two metabolic systems: running on sugar or on fat

The nutrition needed for building the essential compounds and biochemical signaling systems of our body and for preserving the healthy functioning of our cells must come to a great extent from essential amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals. If we lack them, it will take its toll on our health and well-being.

For example, the genesis of proteins with important functions in our body – as played by enzymes, and hormones – depends on the right kind of nutritional intake. Enzymes catalyze biochemical reactions, and hormones are messengers giving specific signals to cells.

There are four different types of hormones working in our body to coordinate various complex cycles. Let us look briefly at two major classes: Some are peptide hormones consisting of amino acids, like insulin. Others are so-called steroid hormones derived from cholestorol: cortisol and the sex hormons are an example of this category.

Carbohydrates are necessary nutrients, too, as the genesis of DNA and RNA depends on them. It is possible though to derive the amount of carbohydrates actually needed solely from vegetables without eating any grain products.

If we consume a lot of carbohydrates, our body will mostly use them as sources of energy because they can be easily converted into glucose ready to be burned in our cells. Any “overdose“ of carbohydrates exceeding the amount of calories we need will inevitably be turned into body fat.

Yet we are metabolically flexible: We can also use proteins and fats as fuel instead of carbohydrates. In his book Eat, Fast, Feast. Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul – A Christian Guide to Fasting, Jay W. Richards explains how a so-called ketogenic diet – instead of the standard American (or Western) diet – can make regular fasting much easier for us. He describes how our metabolism works:

“Constant grazing and a diet high in sugar and processed carbs is a very recent trend. For millennia, people ate mostly foods that were only lightly processed. They fasted on some days. They ate moderately on most days – two or three meals without snacks in between. And they feasted just a few days a year.“

Jay W. Richards: Eat, Fast, Feast. Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul – A Christian Guide to Fasting, HarperOne 2020, p. 6

“Our bodies are designed to be able to burn both sugar and fat (from our diet and body stores) for fuel. If you give it carbs, it will burn sugar. If there are no carbs coming in and you use up the stored sugar in your muscles and liver, then the body can do just fine burning fat. That‘s how it‘s worked for most of human history. But most of us now run mostly on sugar all the time. This is not how God designed our bodies to work best.“

Jay W. Richards: Eat, Fast, Feast. Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul – A Christian Guide to Fasting, HarperOne 2020, p. 40

“If you eat anything like the standard American diet, your body runs mostly on sugar. That means it‘s really using only one of its two metabolic systems. (…) Your fat-burning mode is called ketosis. That‘s the metabolic state in which your body converts fats into ketones and uses those, rather than sugar, for energy. (…) There are two ways to turn on ketosis: 1. Don‘t eat anything for three days. That‘s the hard way. 2. Eat a ketogenic diet for several days. That‘s the easy way.
A ketogenic diet is one that is very high in natural fat, very low in carbohydrates, and moderate in protein. And it sticks with carbs that don‘t fiddle much with the insulin dial.“

Jay W. Richards: Eat, Fast, Feast. Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul – A Christian Guide to Fasting, HarperOne 2020, p. 59-60

“As mentioned already, our bodies have two separate pathways for converting food to energy. One pathway converts carbs and some protein to glucose – a type of sugar that every cell in your body can use for fuel. The other one converts fats to ketones. But most of us rarely if ever fully use the fat/ketone pathway. We subsist on sugar, which makes fasting hard. That‘s because our sugar intake has to be recharged every few hours. (…) For the most part, these two systems don‘t run at the same time. As long as you‘re eating lots of carbs – especially carbs with a high glycemic load (…) – your body will just stick with sugar burning and store any extra carbs as fat. In fact, it will even turn protein to sugar rather than bothering to burn fat.“

Jay W. Richards: Eat, Fast, Feast. Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul – A Christian Guide to Fasting, HarperOne 2020, p. 64

Proven negative effects of the standard Western diet with lots of (processed) carbohydrates

Obesity, Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer‘s disease, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, arteriosclerosis (underlying all the major cardiovascular diseases), and various autoimmune disorders all show a connection with diet.

“Type 2 diabetes is so deadly because it leads to many other diseases. In fact, diabetes is a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, cancer, kidney disease, blindness, nerve damage, and damage to extremities that lead to amputation. That‘s because, over time, it attacks every organ of your body.“

Jay W. Richards: Eat, Fast, Feast. Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul – A Christian Guide to Fasting, HarperOne 2020, p. 201

“Some researchers are now calling Alzheimer‘s ‘type 3 diabetes,‘ due to its perceived connection with diet. There are several ways that fasting and ketosis may protect the brain against degeneration – especially over the long term. For instance, studies have found that the brains of Alzheimer‘s victims seem to have trouble metabolizing glucose, while their mental functions improve after several weeks of taking medium-chain triglycerides. These are the fats found in abundance in coconut oil – fats the liver easily converts to ketones.“

Jay W. Richards: Eat, Fast, Feast. Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul – A Christian Guide to Fasting, HarperOne 2020, p. 210

“In one 2018 study, patients with Parkinson‘s disease who ate a ketogenic diet for eight weeks improved both their motor and non-motor skills (such as mental acuity).“

Jay W. Richards: Eat, Fast, Feast. Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul – A Christian Guide to Fasting, HarperOne 2020, p. 211

“Cancer cells, unlike the healthy cells in your body, must derive most of their energy from gluclose (as well as a protein called glutamine). They don‘t have a choice. Cancer cells, in most cases at least, can‘t turn ketones into energy. I bet you can guess what this means. If the healthy cells in your body can run on fat – which they can – but cancer cells need glucose or glutamine, then ketosis could be used as a smart bomb against cancer. Fasting in particular might be a double punch, since it would reduce the sugar and protein available to feed the cancer. That is, fasting may preferentially starve cancer and preserve healthy cells.“

Jay W. Richards: Eat, Fast, Feast. Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul – A Christian Guide to Fasting, HarperOne 2020, p. 212-213

Unfortunately, these scientific studies showing the potential benefits of a change in diet or of a fasting regiment as part of a treatment protocol for physical ailments are most of the time not really considered in our hospitals and nursing homes. At least not yet.

How our microbiome and gut health are affected by our diet

“Did you know that hundreds of millions of neurons, that is, brain cells, line your gut from one end to the other? (…) Researchers now suspect that the link between the brain in your head (with its one hundred billion neurons) and your ‘second brain,‘ your gut, is central to your health and your mood. These two ‘brains‘ are constantly communicating with each other through a direct line called the vagus nerve. Most of their transmissions are outside of our conscious control. (…)
This information superhighway between brain and gut does not just transmit messages from one part of the body to the other. Its southern end is crowded with trillions of bacteria and other microscopic creatures that occupy different parts of your gut. We call them the ‘microbiome.‘ (…) These little messengers send all sorts of signals and play a role in our mood, our immune system and health, and our food cravings.
In fact, our gut bacteria produce much of the serotonin that our brains need in order to function. (…)
Gut health is all about helping the good guys protect us from the bad guys. But where do the good guys, called probiotics, come from in the first place? Your microbiome is a complex result of your birth, your upbringing, your environment, your emotional state, and your diet. (…)
Like all other forms of life, your gut microbiome needs fuel – called prebiotics – which it gets from your diet. Think of probiotics as the seeds in your garden. The fuel is the soil and fertilizer. Depending on the soil and fertilizer we supply, we can end up with either a bumper crop or a weed-infested field. Our diet should encourage the presence of good bugs and drive away the bad. On the bad side: Too much sugar can encourage the fungus Candida, crowding the good guys out of precious real estate. This, in turn, can lead to fatigue, weight gain, bloating, irritable bowel syndrome, and constipation. And if you‘re feeding the sugar-lovers in your gut, you should expect them to send signals to your brain that you will encounter as sugar cravings.“

Jay W. Richards: Eat, Fast, Feast. Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul – A Christian Guide to Fasting, HarperOne 2020, p. 169-172

Besides explaining the astonishing link between our gut, our brain, and our overall health, Jay W. Richards‘ book also provides some hints concerning how we can cultivate a good microbiome in our gut:

“(…) pretty much every traditional cuisine included fermented foods teeming with good bacteria. (…) Sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, tofu, kombucha, unfiltered apple cider vinegar, yogurt, and kefir are all good sources (…). (…) The good bacteria thrive on the soluble fiber in vegetables and other plants. (…) Besides fermented foods and soluble fiber, other prebiotics include omega-3 fats, found in oily fish and in large amounts in your brain, and foods rich in polyphenols, such as green tea, coffee, cocoa, and olive oil.“

Jay W. Richards: Eat, Fast, Feast. Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul – A Christian Guide to Fasting, HarperOne 2020, p. 171-173

Features and advantages of a ketogenic diet, of fasting, and of regular exercise

A ketogenic diet is almost the anti-thesis to the standard Western diet proclaimed by the “food pyramid“ we teach in all our schools. In some respects it resembles the Mediterranean diet.

“Eat a ‘ketogenic‘ diet of high natural fat, moderate protein, and very low carbs (below fifty grams not counting fiber) without simple sugars, grains, or starches. Get about 80 percent of your calories from fat, 15 percent from protein, and 5 percent from carbohydrates. Think natural fats – such as olive and coconut oil – and fatty meats. For carbs, focus on green vegetables grown above ground – such as spinach, broccoli, and asparagus. This way of eating allows your body to shift to a state of ‘ketosis,‘ in which it draws most of its energy from dietary and body fat. Drink lots of water and increase your salt intake.“

Jay W. Richards: Eat, Fast, Feast. Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul – A Christian Guide to Fasting, HarperOne 2020, p. 291

We have already seen that a ketogenic diet is healthy for us. It consists mainly of healthy (unsaturated) fatty acids (like olive oil, coconut oil, peanut oil, avocado oil), animal products (red meat, fish, eggs and some dairy), lots of low-carb vegetables, nuts, and fruits. This way our body uses fat, not glucose, for fuel and receives a lot of essential nutrients.

Almost automatically, if done well, such a diet will be rich in antioxidants which protect the health of our cells. All the foods associated with anti-inflammatory effects will be consumed more whenever we cut back on the (industrially manufactured) grain products for saturating ourselves and turn to other sources. Inflammation in the body – which is more likely to occur with the standard Western diet – causes all kinds of chronic aches and long-term damages.

It is easy to eat a ketogenic diet if you prepare and cook all your meals for yourself from “raw materials“. It is hard or impossible to follow this diet plan whenever you buy already processed foods, instant meals, or eat out a lot.

Richards is concerned with a ketogenic diet mostly because once people are not craving “sugar loads“ every two to three hours any more, keeping regular days of fasting – for Catholics traditionally Wednesday and Friday, the Advent and Lent seasons – becomes much easier for us.

Regular fasting is not only a traditional spiritual practice but improves our bodily health as well. Longer time periods without digestion give our bodies the chance to rebuild, repair, and cleanse themselves.

Thirdly, regular exercising is an indispensable pillar of keeping body, mind, and soul at ease, in balance, unless we are hard-working farmers anyways.

“Exercise does many important things, including changing our body composition, improving our health, and increasing both our insulin sensitivity and our mental acuity. (…) You should exercise – that is, use your body to do work – because that‘s how God designed us. We‘re not supposed to sit around all day. To be more specific, we should exercise to maintain lean muscle mass and bone density and to keep our cardiovascular system in good working order.“

Jay W. Richards: Eat, Fast, Feast. Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul – A Christian Guide to Fasting, HarperOne 2020, p. 150

Bread and culture

It is, as we have seen, actually best for us to eat more like the people in the Middle East, more like Jesus and His disciples did. But besides fish, vegetables, and olive oil, didn‘t they also eat a lot of bread?

That is true. But Jay W. Richards notes that when it comes to its nutritional value, we cannot quite equate the bread we would buy at a supermarket today with the bread Jesus and his disciples ate:

“The typical bread eaten at the time of Jesus was different and less refined, and therefore broke down into sugars much more gradually in the body. Moreover, people ate bread at fixed times, and did not graze on it throughout the day.“

Jay W. Richards: Eat, Fast, Feast. Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul – A Christian Guide to Fasting, HarperOne 2020, p. 12

Yet bread is just the kind of food that highlights that it is not enough to look at what we eat only from the perspective of a scientist studying nutritional values and diet benefits in an isolated way detached from the usual dietary customs of a society. Eating habits are deeply entrenched in culture, just as true culture – or every culture for that matter – finds its source in a specific religious cult.

Is not bread a very simple and humble way to feed ourselves, while at the same time being something utterly cultural, not plainly natural, being cultivated grain? Is this not even more true whenever we ourselves bake this bread with our own hands from the raw materials, putting in some work just like all these peasant people did in the ancient days? For a piece of unleavened bread one needs nothing else but the four ingredients of flour, water, olive oil, and salt – and kneading hands.

Both then and today, bread is cheap and gets us saturated. It is “every man‘s diet“; breaking and sharing bread is always a great way to build community across all social borders; and chewing on a piece of bread has something very grounding – and even soothing and comforting – to it.

“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.“

Genesis 3: 19

“Didn‘t Jesus elevate bread and wine to sacraments and pray for our daily bread in the prayer he taught his disciples?“

Jay W. Richards: Eat, Fast, Feast. Heal Your Body While Feeding Your Soul – A Christian Guide to Fasting, HarperOne 2020, p. 12

“Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life. – Blessed be God for ever.
Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the wine we offer you: fruit of the vine and work of human hands, it will become our spiritual drink. – Blessed be God for ever.“ 

Prayers for the Preparation of the Gifts at Holy Mass (Ordinary Form)

The bread that we children of Adam and Eve eat in the sweat of our face has indeed been sanctified by the hands of Jesus breaking it, His giving thanks, by the Our Father, the miracles of the Multiplication of the Loaves, and by the Most Holy Eucharist.

As much health benefits as a ketogenic diet may have: The Judeo-Christian culture is unthinkable without good bakery – without common daily bread as well as delicious cookies and tasty cakes on feasting days.