In the past, every human on the planet fasted regularly.

Not out of choice, I might add.

Before agriculture, feeding ourselves involved effort and risk.

Foraging came with the chance of becoming food for other animals and hunting meant putting

ourselves in real danger.

Without ways to preserve our food, it would spoil quickly.

We were on a never-ending mission to find the sustenance to survive.

Today, things are different for many of us.

We can get food with a swipe of a smartphone and eat when we want, at all hours of the day.

But at what cost to our bodies and the helpful microbes that live inside us?

This is Zoe Science and Nutrition.

I'm Jonathan Wall.

Today on the show we ask is fasting important for the health of our gut.

This episode is part of a limited series to celebrate the launch of the Big IF study.

The world's biggest clinical study to discover how intermittent fasting really affects us.

By inviting our amazing community of citizen scientists to take part in this experiment,

we hope to understand whether intermittent fasting really can improve how we feel, from

our hunger levels to our mood and energy.

To take part for free and discover if intermittent fasting can work for you, simply go to joinzoe.com-slash-the-blog.

Big IF. That's THE, B-I-G-I-F, or via the link in the show notes.

When we were looking for someone to speak about what's happening in our gut when we fast,

we didn't have to look very far.

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