I just wanted to pop back to this thread and see if everyone here has read Jeff Novick's thread on "Is it Dangerous to Skip Meals?"
In that thread, he makes the excellent point, that people commonly and regularly go eight hours without a meal -- it is called "sleep". And no one I have ever known, wakes up four hours into their nighttime sleep shaking with the need to eat some food immediately.
So what's going on?
Is this because people do not have a caffeine crash during their sleep? Or was it the aftermath of eating some type of highly processed food? Or is it the body's deep and anxious expectation of food that is expressing itself as a shaking and sweating weakness?
I don't know the answers, but it does seem to me that we are told so vehemently that we must eat frequently and richly, and then what people experience seems to ring true with what they were told to expect.
The thread I mentioned is here:
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=15151&hilit=Dangerous+mealSo I don't know if this is useful to anyone, but I do think it's a good place to start, because there's a TON of fear-mongering about needing to "eat enough" even when we see that we are a society of tremendous excess not deficiency. It is a good topic, so I'm glad someone brought this up!