Among these old arguments is the novel idea of eating less than what fills one’s belly. The Talmud teaches that people should eat enough to fill a third of their stomachs, drink enough to fill another third, and leave a third empty. (A hadith in the Islamic tradition also teaches this.) Rashi, a medieval French rabbi, interpreted the Talmud to mean that the final empty third is necessary so that the body can metabolize emotions. If one ate until one’s belly was completely full, there’d be no room left to manage one’s emotions and one would burst asunder.Typically, no reference is given. I trust that some alert PaleoJudaica reader can provide one.
However absurd this may seem to us today, it made physiological sense in the premodern world as the emotions were considered physical things that, like food and drink, were metabolized by the body. A body stuffed with food and drink is full only of biology; it leaves no room for biography, for what makes us human.
Physiology of emotions aside, the approach, whether Talmudic or not, of pushing away from the table before you're stuffed is generally pretty effective.
That said, there may well be an element of making the best of a bad job in the Talmud's advice. Scarcity of resources, including food, was the norm in the brutal world of antiquity.
