Fasting with a New Look: GGD Launches ’30 Healthier Days’ Challenge

Lent is a Roman Catholic tradition, says cultural theologian Frank Bosman. “After Carnival, you have forty days of fasting and abstinence as Easter approaches. It is then traditional to renounce pleasures.”

It can be anything: you can choose to eat less meat, fat or sugar. But in 2023, you could also stop watching TV or using social media. “It’s about depriving yourself of something you really love. Thinking about what’s really important in life. You can also meditate and pray. All of this to prepare for Easter.”

30 days healthier

But there is an even more recent way of fasting, launched by seven GGDs in the Netherlands: “30 healthier days”. The intention is for you to learn how to live healthier in March in thirty days. “People can give their own interpretation,” says Evelien Specken of GGD Hart voor Brabant.

“You can have wholemeal bread every day instead of white, but also drink water instead of sugary drinks. Especially after Carnival, I imagine people would like to think more consciously about their health.”

Thirty days were deliberately chosen. “If you do a challenge for thirty days, that often means you keep doing it for longer. Then it becomes routine. And we think that’s important,” Specken says.

Many similar initiatives

After Dry January, Stoptober and of course old-fashioned fasting, the initiative is the umpteenth in a row. “There’s a lot of thought about a more sober life,” says cultural theologian Frank Bosman. “It shows that we want to find peace and think: what is really important in a human life? What do we add or what comes out of deeds and words?”

He doesn’t think it’s a bad thing that so many such initiatives now exist. “I don’t think you should see it as competitors to each other. If everyone got in on some action once a year, we would all benefit.”

Will he participate himself? “I myself am a Burgundian Brabant, fasting is hard for me,” laughs Bosman. “But with my wife’s encouragement, I’m going to try it from now on. The classic way: less sweets, less fries and one less dish at dinner. Because let’s be honest: with our ecological footprint, it doesn’t isn’t a bad idea at all.”