Tomorrow morning starts the grueling Orthodox lent. No animal product for 40 days. Note that both Ancient Greeks and Levantine Semites never ate meat without some kind of sacrifice to the God(s), something that persists in Kosher-Halal rituals. Meat was limited to festivals (“carnival”).

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I initially thought that the intermittent protein deprivation followed by overcompensation was meant to draw benefits from Jensen’s inequality/antifragility (whether the process is kidney-rest, anti-inflammatory or authophagy for cancer control/hormonal as held by Valter Longo, it doesn’t matter because we know the statistical structure of natural life gave hunters intermittent meat and steady vegetables and we are not supposed to have steady red meat).

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But it can’t be just that. It just hit me that I missed a central point. This relief was also to help … THE ANIMALS, the ecology. Animals too need a break from milk/egg production, etc. And because of nonlinearity their population may need some kind of natural surge (hint: look at Lotka-Volterra predator-prey models).

via Tomorrow morning starts the grueling Orthodox… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.