The Stoic diet

The Stoics didn't have diet advice. Not really. They didn't have the same problems. But, using their ideas, I want to put forward an idea of what they may advice for our present troubles.

Obesity has always been around as long as animals have been, but only lately has human obesity reached epidemic proportions. My theory on why this is involves only a human weakness and capitalism.

The human weakness is based on evolution. We're programmed to fill our belly. On evolutionary time scales, the short term gain of eating as much as possible outweighed the long term risk of obesity and its diseases.

Food companies want to make a profit, and keep the company growing. They do this by cutting costs and expanding sales. To really make cheap food you have to use cheap, industrially manufactured ingredients. And to expand, you have to tailor the food to appeal to our base desires. Sugars, fats, salt and of course quantity.  Our stomachs are fixed in size to some degree, but they can be expanded, slowly, which gives a greater market cap to the food industry as a whole.

All these forces are conspiring against us. We can't control the food industry. We can control ourselves, although it isn't easy.

As usual, practice can help. Perhaps it is the only thing that can help. We need to practice being the kind of people that do not overeat.

One concept that the Stoics talk about is hunger. We avoid hunger as a way of life. But, as the Stoics say, hunger is not so bad. It makes any food taste good, and we rarely have to put up with it for long.

My advice is this. Practice being hungry. Eat just enough so that you are hungry at the start of the next meal. To accomplish this, you will have to practice not eating. If you aren't hungry, don't eat.  If it is mealtime and you aren't hungry, you've lost this round, eat a small meal and try again with the next meal. This stuff sounds easy, but we've been practicing our bad eating habits our entire lives, and all our most basic programing is against us. It will take work, but so does every skill worth having.

From Epictetus:

Let the measure to you of all food and drink be the first satisfying of the desire; and let the food and the pleasure be the appetite itself: and you will neither take more than necessary, nor will you want cooks, and you will be satisfied with the drink that comes in the way.

Make your manner of eating neither luxurious nor gloomy, but lively and frugal, that the soul may not be perturbed, through being deceived by the pleasures of the body, and that it may despise them; and that the soul may not be injured by the enjoyment of present luxury, and the body may not afterwards suffer from disease.

Take care that the food which you put into the stomach does not fatten (nourish) you, but the cheerfulness of the mind: for the food is changed into excrement, and ejected, and the urine also flows out at the same time; but the cheerfulness, even if the soul be separated, remains always uncorrupted. 

Enjoy your meal, in other words.  Satisfy your hunger and your thirst (this is why you need to be hungry), and let that be your pleasure.  Don't take too much pleasure in the food itself, for it will soon be eaten and expelled from your body,.  You may not always have such nice food, but you can always have pleasure in your meals by following this advice.