That's pseudoscience. Irregular eating is normal for hunter/gatherer societies, and most animals like our ancestors that sit in a scavenger niche. We know (or have good evidence that; I followed a link once and am too lazy to look up the research) our gut has adapted just in the 10k year period after the advent of agriculture. Agrarian societies are built around grain storage and rationing. They absolutely have regular access to calories.
That doesn't prove anything, of course. But it does argue that you should be careful with that kind of "it's the way our bodies are intended to work" logic. To a large extent, we're already adapted to "modern" eating styles.
I'm getting a bit tired of seeing the "pseudoscience" label slapped on an argument every single time evolutionary biology is mentioned. I understand why one might want to do this occasionally, but I feel the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, and now the label is being abused.
This is basically the new "correlation is not causation" meme equivalent. Yes, correlation indeed does not equate causation in a strict sense. But given a large enough number of samples, it becomes the domain of statistical analysis, and then causation can be solidly inferred with a well determined degree of confidence.
So be careful when repeating trendy memes. Trendy does not equate truthful.
Anyway, to provide some kind of answer: Seeing how studies keep coming in, showing that I.F. is beneficial in a number of different ways, seems to suggest that this regimen is, indeed, better overall for your health than 3 meals a day every day. The jury is probably still out, but perhaps getting close to returning for a decision now.
Also, the 10k year "adaptation" is a weak argument. We've adapted in some ways, yes - lactose tolerance, etc. In other ways the intracellular biochemistry has not changed. 10k years is a short time after all; it allows some adaptations but it's too quick for big changes. Our distant ancestors very likely did not live on a steady caloric input, and the time is too short for us to have adapted completely to a different feeding pattern.
Yes, I agree it's hard to know for sure, that's why I used expressions such as "virtually certain" and "strongly doubt". Both suggest a degree of uncertainty. I was not making it into a science, by any means.
Hmm, I'm tempted to think this is an analogue of Muphry's law, where someone correcting someone's grammar is likely to make grammar mistakes himself. (Or, at least, that we are much more likely to notice if he has.)
Getting a large enough number of samples is not enough to show that a correlation implies a causation. It merely demonstrates that a perceived correlation is real and is not the result of random sampling error. Take a few samples, and you'll see a strong correlation between wearing a cast and having broken bones; take an enormous number of samples, and you'll prove the correlation is real, and you'll show the precise magnitude of the correlation with small error bars; but you'll never prove that wearing a cast causes broken bones. To prove causation, you need a causative theory, and evidence that distinguishes it from competing causative theories.
Though perhaps you are thinking of situations where the only plausible causative theories are "A and B are unrelated" and "A causes B".
I think to claim it's pseudoscience is to claim it's more than a hypothesis. The OP did no such thing. The virtual certainty is from his perspective, not yours (or mine).
EDIT: I would also strongly recommend divorcing our DNA from our gut in this case; they are two different things, and both certainly influence our metabolic processes.
> I would also strongly recommend divorcing our DNA from our gut
Why? The gut flora has its own DNA, and it absolutely coevolves with the rest of the organism. It's non-sensical to say that we're "adapted" for something via one mechanism and not the other. Adaptations use the full spectrum of evolvable media (including culture, for that matter) by definition. They aren't separable unless you can literally point to a specific gene or bacteria or cooking practice. And we can't.
> It's non-sensical to say that we're "adapted" for something via one mechanism and not the other.
And yet, that's exactly what you implied—that our current metabolic process is entirely the result of the 10k years of change in the gut bacteria, NOT the previous hundreds of thousands of years we spent persistence hunting protein and gathering nutrition.
What? No, I said there was clear evidence that our systems (as a whole, though I specifically referenced gut flora as the evidence) had adapted to our existence as agrarian grain eaters. And that makes argument from the position of "our systems are really intended to be scavengers" pretty suspect.
Basically, any argument of what we are "supposed" to eat in that context is pseudoscientific garbage. The real science says we need to pay attention to agriculture.
> The real science says we need to pay attention to agriculture.
What's the source in question here? I've now completely lost you. Gut flora is elastic and can't tell us much about anything but what we eat in our own lifetimes. I see zero evidence anywhere I look that we should use this flora to figure out which diet maximizes long term health. If anything, it's more indicative of what we are eating than what we might eat that would be better.
That doesn't prove anything, of course. But it does argue that you should be careful with that kind of "it's the way our bodies are intended to work" logic. To a large extent, we're already adapted to "modern" eating styles.