The Enlightenment Diet

by Bruce Feiler Info

Bruce Feiler is the bestselling author of Walking the Bible, Abraham, and America’s Prophet, and the host of Walking the Bible on PBS. His new book, The Council of Dads, describes how he responded to a cancer diagnosis by asking six friends to help father his daughters.

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Fasting is a practice that Jews and Muslims, believers and scientists, Deepak Chopra and Glenn Beck all embrace. But does going without food really deliver spiritual and physical benefits? Bruce Feiler investigates.

If you’re looking for a way to bring together believers and scientists, here’s a tip that could remind them of their commonality and save money, too: No food!

Fasting may be the one activity these days that unites the religious and the secular, the left and the right, Deepak Chopra and Glenn Beck.

Abnegation is a way of adding oomph to any ritual; putting your stomach where your mouth is. It’s like saying, “Hey, God, I really mean it!”

As Muslims look back on a month of daytime fasts, Jews observe a 24-hour fast to observe the Day of Atonement, and Glenn Beck initiates a daylong fast to honor the Founding Fathers, the time seems ripe to ask: Does fasting work? Can it, as the prophets suggest, expiate our sins and bring us closer to God? Can it, as the yogis propose, purge our toxins and improve our sex lives? Can it, as researchers hypothesize, cure our jet lag and help us get pregnant?

In short, can fasting save the world?

Fasting pops up in an astonishing array of cultures around the world, from the Babylonians to the Incas, the Confucians to the Jains, which suggests that abstaining from food is one of the core impulses of religion, right up there with mourning, marriage, and sexual regulation. Abnegation is a way of adding oomph to any ritual; putting your stomach where your mouth is. It’s like saying, “Hey, God, I really mean it!”

In the Abrahamic faiths, the notion of fasting appears in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Koran, but generally speaking the practice seems to grow more important over time. The patriarchs don’t fast, but Moses does. The kings fast some (especially David, who had lots of sins to atone for), but the prophets even more. Christians fast more than Jews; Muslims more than either. One explanation might be that as religion became more organized, diverse, and international, fasting as a way of imposing universal authority on far-flung, disparate people became more central to the priestly class.

Fasting in the Bible is both personal and political. Individuals abstain from food to express contrition (Ahab) or to prepare for divine revelation (Moses). In a precursor to hunger strikes today, leaders also fast to prepare troops for battle (Samuel) or to request divine aid for a political cause (Ezra). Jesus fasted for 40 days but warned others not to starve themselves for public show. (What would he have said about a 2003 publicity stunt in which David Blaine starved himself for 44 days in a glass box over the Thames and lost 25 percent of his body weight?)

Eastern religions stress a different reason for fasting, namely that it cleanses the body and purifies the mind. The Indian tradition of Ayurveda, espoused by both Buddhists and Hindus and endorsed by Deepak Chopra, holds that the body is 80 percent liquid and that fasting purges corrosive toxins and restores proper balance. The Jains have a ritual of voluntary death by fasting, which they distinguish from suicide because of the prolonged period of contemplation and preparation.

So is any of this backed up by science?

The normal instinct of scientists is to scoff at religious rituals as primitive and naïve, coming from that pitiable time before the invention of the lab coat. And scientists do, indeed, downplay many of the supposed benefits of abstaining from food. For starters, your vital organs already do a pretty good job of dispensing with toxins. Second, fasting is not a good strategy for losing weight—after about half a day of not eating, the body turns to muscle and fat for fuel, then eventually slows down its metabolism, so that once you start eating again, any weight loss is quickly reversed.