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The 'vegetable fasting days' seem a lot like the popular 5-2 diet. Only difference is these knight didn't need years of medical research to discover this, perha

The 'vegetable fasting days' seem a lot like the popular 5-2 diet. Only difference is these knight didn't need years of medical research to discover this, perhaps just years of poor health :) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2015/jan/27/fasting-facts-is-the-52-diet-too-good-to-be-true https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2015/ja... http://www.bbc.com/news/health-19112549 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-19112549

castlecrasher2 8y ago
The article says the off-meat days included eggs and cheese, though, so not quite the same thing.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Not a lot though. These things were expensive even for knights. Similarly the usual days did not have as much animal produce as today. Remember that these people were professional soldiers with at least a few hours of strenuous exercise a day combined with relative leisure In prayer. (Compared to peasants or even modern day workers.)
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    Were eggs expensive? I thought that eggs traditionally were the inexpensive alternative to meat, going back a long time.
    - oh_sigh 8y ago
      Doubtful that eggs were expensive on terms of cost per calorie compared to chicken. A 4 pound chicken will get you about 2000 calories after it is cooked, whereas the same chicken would lay approx 5 eggs/week, each @ 75 calories, or 375 calories/week. So, it would only take 6 weeks for a chicken to output as many calories as exist within it, and chickens lay eggs productively for 4-5 years.
      - moonka 8y ago
        And at the end you do still have the chicken, albeit a little bit older and perhaps less tasty.
Brockenstein 8y ago
>Only difference is these knight didn't need years of medical research to discover this Sure they did. They didn't start that diet on day one. Between ideas of nutrition during their lifetimes and however long it took to adopt, formalize and tweak their diet regimen it could have taken years or generations even. The difference now is we have a deeper understanding of everything involved with nutrition and some of the research we do is determining why we see the effects we do as opposed to the Templars just trying to achieve a desired effect. It's pretty easy to discount the amount of time that was spent on it and the number of missteps along the way and the unavoidable fluff the Templars also likely engaged in. And then compare that to formalized research and imagine that the Templars had some intuitive insight that makes scientific research look redundant or overly complicated...

castlecrasher2 8y ago

The article says the off-meat days included eggs and cheese, though, so not quite the same thing.

AstralStorm 8y ago
Not a lot though. These things were expensive even for knights. Similarly the usual days did not have as much animal produce as today. Remember that these people were professional soldiers with at least a few hours of strenuous exercise a day combined with relative leisure In prayer. (Compared to peasants or even modern day workers.)
- perl4ever 8y ago
  Were eggs expensive? I thought that eggs traditionally were the inexpensive alternative to meat, going back a long time.
  - oh_sigh 8y ago
    Doubtful that eggs were expensive on terms of cost per calorie compared to chicken. A 4 pound chicken will get you about 2000 calories after it is cooked, whereas the same chicken would lay approx 5 eggs/week, each @ 75 calories, or 375 calories/week. So, it would only take 6 weeks for a chicken to output as many calories as exist within it, and chickens lay eggs productively for 4-5 years.
    - moonka 8y ago
      And at the end you do still have the chicken, albeit a little bit older and perhaps less tasty.

Brockenstein 8y ago

>Only difference is these knight didn't need years of medical research to discover this Sure they did. They didn't start that diet on day one. Between ideas of nutrition during their lifetimes and however long it took to adopt, formalize and tweak their diet regimen it could have taken years or generations even. The difference now is we have a deeper understanding of everything involved with nutrition and some of the research we do is determining why we see the effects we do as opposed to the Templars just trying to achieve a desired effect. It's pretty easy to discount the amount of time that was spent on it and the number of missteps along the way and the unavoidable fluff the Templars also likely engaged in. And then compare that to formalized research and imagine that the Templars had some intuitive insight that makes scientific research look redundant or overly complicated...