Fasting to Get Closer to God

I've covered modern attitudes about fasting before, but after I saw this article in the New York Times regarding fasting and religion, thought it was time to bring it up again.

You can tell the extent of the food industry's brainwashing of the American public by the appalled reactions you get when you bring up fasting.

Tell someone that you're going to fast for a day or two, and you're viewed as crazy, out of the ordinary, and jeopardizing your health.   People shake their heads and will actually ask you why you would even do such a thing as go 1 day without eating.  

But, when you look back on history, fasting was part of the regular cycle of human existence, and often tied to religious observance.   Fasting during  Lent, Ramadan or Yom Kipper were part of the natural cycle of the religious year and preparing yourself to be closer to God.

If you go back even further, fasting was often just a part of human existence.   Our ancient ancestors fasted because, sadly, they often didn't have access to food.  

So, although the modern food industry has convinced us that we need to be constantly stuffing our pie-holes day in and day out, in actuality our bodies are designed to go days without food from time to time.

In our modern world, food is so readily available, that the problem is that we spend billions trying to negate the effects of eating that bounty, i.e, lose the fat.

The reality is that fasting for one day a month, is probably healthier then sticking to the 3 meals a day, every day, dogma that we've espoused.  But we are now so surrounded by food and food advertising that consciencely not eating is unthinkable.

Now, of course, there is a difference between healthy fasting, and eating disorders.  Short term fasting for health or religious reasons is, well, healthy.   Short or long term fasting for no other reason then to try to loose weight is unhealthy.