A number of inventions have come out of Silicon Valley that have made the world a better place, such as the iPhone X or offices with ping-pong tables, or others that shaken up the cosmic order, such as Google Glass or short-sleeved shirts. The San Francisco bay area is also a source of constant news about the eccentricities of executives, which often end up setting new trends. The latest example is a diet that many CEOs are following, which consists of eating normally for two days followed by between two to five of fasting. According to the prophets of this eating method, the aim is not to get fit, but rather to improve productivity, to be more focused and to feel better.
“Starting these fasting period is, without a doubt, one of the two or three best decisions I have made in my life,” the CEO of All Turtles, Phil Libin, told The Guardian. When he spoke to the UK newspaper, the businessman had already spent four days fasting, consuming only water, coffee and black tea, ingesting a maximum of 500 calories a day.
He is not the only executive in the area who is convinced of this method. The article also mentions such top CEOs as Geoffrey Woo, of HVMN, or Loic L Meur, of Lade.rs, who appears to have been the first to promote this way of eating.
Yet, can a diet based on fasting really improve concentration and, therefore, job performance? “Absolutely not. What works is eating foods that act on the brain, such as nuts, which contain amino acids that can be transformed into serotonin,” says medical doctor and professor of physiology at the UAB, August Corominas.
Harmful diet
Fasting for days not only does not help to improve performance, but, says the medical expert, can have harmful effects on health. “This is not a physiological diet. People need a certain number of calories every day and to ingest carbs, liquids,...after five days only on coffee you are in deficit, because you have not ingested proteins and that is especially dangerous for people with liver problems, as it accelerates the production of acetone, which produces feelings of sickness and vomiting in extreme cases,” he says. In fact, Corominas compares this fasting with only liquids to break it with hunger strikes, “with the difference that some protesters will take a little soup, which provides some protein.”
Doctor Corominas warns of the danger of following these examples
Doctor Corominas warns of the danger of following these examples, such as that of the Silicon Valley CEOs, which are not validated by any dietician or specialist. “They are associating fasting with an improvement in health and, even anti-aging, and that does nothing more than create confusion. It is a totally inadequate method.”
Just because fasting does not improve health or performance does not mean there are not formulas for doing so. The doctor chooses not to reinvent the wheel. “The best thing is to eat a slightly hypocaloric diet, like the famous Mediterranean diet, and to do at least some exercise so as to generate endorphins. We don’t need to do anything else to lose weight and feel better.”
It is a classic prescription against the “innovations” of Silicon Valley.