"It seems that eating is inherently stressful for the body." I don't think that's the proper way to think about it. It's more probably that what is going on i

"It seems that eating is inherently stressful for the body." I don't think that's the proper way to think about it. It's more probably that what is going on is that fasting was unavoidable for our ancestors, and the body evolved for that to be a period where some kind of repair action was activated. Without fasting something doesn't happen. That something is probably related to autophagy.