Why Fast? by Christine Baumgarthuber: Book Review
This is the odd one out on the list, and deliberately so. Christine Baumgarthuber’s book is a cultural history of why people have gone without food across thousands of years, rather than a diet or a how-to. It makes a useful counterweight to the protocol-heavy titles. The most rigorous of those, if you want the clinical evidence next, is The Fasting Fix.
Author: Christine Baumgarthuber · Publisher: Reaktion Books, 2023 · Length: about 184 pages
What Why Fast? covers
Baumgarthuber, a food writer, traces restrictive eating from antiquity through religious asceticism, political hunger strikes, and health movements, up to the modern intermittent fasting boom. Across five chapters she asks why humans fast at all, whether the practice fits our biology, and how the claimed benefits weigh against the documented risks.
The tone is analytical and often critical. Rather than sell you a plan, it situates fasting inside a much older human impulse toward mastery over the body, and closes by asking what fasting means in a culture that now tracks and shares everything. Part of Reaktion’s Food Controversies series, it reads like a thoughtful long essay rather than a manual.
Who it’s best for
Readers who want the history, culture, and critical context of fasting, and who enjoy understanding where an idea came from before deciding what to do with it.
Key takeaways from Why Fast?
- Fasting is far older than any modern diet, and its meaning has shifted with each era.
- The line between discipline and disorder has always been contested.
- Claimed benefits deserve to be weighed honestly against real risks.
- Cultural context can make you a more sceptical, better-informed reader of the how-to books.
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Fasting that adapts to your cycle
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How it fits cycle-aware fasting
There is no protocol here to adapt, which is the point. What it offers is perspective, and perspective is worth having before you commit to any fasting plan. When you are ready to move from the why to the how, our page on the science of cycle-aware fasting explains how the menstrual cycle changes the picture for women, and is intermittent fasting bad for you takes the same balanced, risk-aware view this book models.
Where it falls short
By design it gives you no diet plan and no protocols, so anyone looking for practical fasting guidance will need to pair it with one of the other titles here.
The verdict
The most intellectually interesting book on the list and the least practical, which is fine. Read it for perspective, and look to the how-to titles when you’re ready to plan.
This review is part of our roundup of the best intermittent fasting books.
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