The fast in breakfast

Forget the 5:2 diet and fast every day instead. That was the message of Professor Tim Spector, a nutritional expert, to the Cheltenham Science Festival. It’s not that we should eat nothing, but rather that there ought to be a 14-hour period with no food. This might seem to contradict the old saw about breakfasting like a king. But breakfast is still allowed, so long as you defer it until 11am. That is necessary because on average we eat dinner later than ever, perhaps not finishing until 9pm, so the starting gun for a new eating day must be fired correspondingly late. It’s to do with letting microbes get their microscopic gnashers more energetically into our alimentary intake. It is impossible to combine the Spector diet with constant grazing from the fridge. But daily time-out can give a healthier meaning to fast food.