Live fast, die old
Michael Mosley’s column (Summer, p27) sheds light on the benefits of ‘daily fasting’ and eating only during restricted daytime hours. Only a generation or two ago this was a normal way of consuming food, dictated by necessity and sometimes also by traditions and customs.
My grandparents, who were married in 1902, lived in a house without central heating and running water. To keep milk fresh, they lowered the closed milk container on a rope into the well to hang just above the water level. Their daily routine didn’t begin with breakfast in bed – they had to fetch wood to light the stove, water for their morning cup of tea, and milk out of the well. Being devoted Eastern Orthodox Christians, they said their prayers every morning before they would eat or drink anything. Sometimes it was almost midday by the time they had their first meal, and they had their last between 6pm and 7pm, so their ‘daily fast’ was always about 15 or 16 hours. And they lived into their 90s.
Their children and grandchildren, however, enjoyed modern comforts, with food available around the clock and religion seen as old-fashioned. Obesity, heart disease and early death followed – four of my grandparents’ sons died in their 50s and 60s, so did several grandsons. Their three daughters lived into their 80s, but so far no granddaughters have survived beyond their 70s.
My grandparents would have been horrified at the way we use food in the West nowadays, eating more than is needed for sustenance and throwing food away because we bought too much in the first place. Diets often encourage this prodigality while their effect is limited. We should rethink our attitude to food for the sake of both our own health and that of our environment.
Elena Holden, Hampshire
Born to sin?
I have recently been enjoying your podcast after seeing an advert for it in a recent issue. I listened to the episode about sin with Jack Lewis (from 27 June), and it made me wonder whether certain people are more predisposed to ‘sin’ in certain ways compared to other people?
Say, for example, whether some people or families are more inclined to gluttony or envy than others – and whether this is because of their brain structure or a product of their upbringing – or whether we are all equally likely to experience all types of sin? Do you know if anyone has done any research into this?
I am glad I have finally discovered your podcast because it can keep me company on the walk to and from the train station!
April Hayes, via email
Glad you like the podcast! We’ve forwarded your question on to Jack Lewis. – Daniel Bennett, editor
Beds over bombs
Having finally roused myself from my lethargy to comment on your excellent article about the virtues of laziness (Summer, p39), I feel that the greatest advantage of all was overlooked: how much better the world would be if we had all greeted demagogues and warmongers with a yawn and a “Yeah, whatever… maybe next year for your war?”
Hitler and the rest of them could have fought among themselves while the rest of us looked idly on. Surely the greatest evolutionary advantage of all? Now I really must go and have a lie down.
Alan Blackwood, Tameside
Morning melancholy
Regarding your story on ‘night owls’ being more prone to depression (Summer, p21), is it possibly because we owls spend a good deal of our lives jetlagged and sleep deprived?
School and work hours in the developed world are geared towards larks, so we mostly find waking up hard, then spend the first two or three hours stumbling about half awake. Think auto-hangover every weekday. Then there’s the difficulty getting to sleep early enough… it’s enough to make anyone depressed! Hilary Gee, Grange-over-Sands
Email – not so eco-friendly?
In your June issue (p83) there was an interesting discussion of the carbon footprint of an email. It suggested that the environmental impact effect of sending an email is quite small, but I would challenge this finding.
While an individual email adds virtually nothing to the CO2 in the world, this calculation does not take into account the fact that most of the world’s computers are phantom users of electricity. Running 24/7, they are continually consuming electricity – not just when we get our emails. This would be akin to leaving our car idling in the driveway, waiting for the next trip to the grocery store.
We don’t just boot up our PCs, download our emails and then shut them off. Therefore, sending and receiving emails consumes far more than the 4g each that is quoted.
Whit Strong, Ottawa, Canada That’s a valid point, but since we use computers for other things, too, we can’t blame all of that electricity on email. A true calculation would have to determine what proportion of our computer time is spent on email vs gaming vs spreadsheets and so on and divide up the idle electricity pro rata. What’s more, most computers enter sleep mode if they’re left idle, and this typically consumes only 4W of electricity. If your computer spends 20 hours a day in sleep mode, this is equivalent to sending an extra seven emails.