St. Nicholas of Myra

CE

His feast was celebrated today at St. Basil's.
I was reading the fasting guidelines for the eparchy that includes St. Basil's. Abstinence from meat on Fridays; abstinence from meat is encouraged on Wednesdays. Vigils (Eves) of Christ and Theophany are traditionally days of strict fast, highly commendable but not required.

This got me thinking about the impact of diet upon appetite. Should we mess up our body and its regulation of appetite by eating too many carbs, so that our bodies can be more unruly and we can have a greater need for infused temperance? (Shades of Kant.) Or should we working on restoring the regulation of appetite by going paleo/primal (which may actually make [intermittent] fasting easier)? Abstaining from meat may not be too much to demand, if we are allowed to eat animal fats. But if those are banned, or if they are not readily available in an isolated form, would that prohibition on meat still be sensible? Probably - it would be just for one day...

Acts of temperance would be required for the body to adopt a paleo/primal diet and to avoid sugar most of the time, until the craving for sugar has subsided as the body adjusts to fat being the energy source. If the paleo/primal diet makes the body healthy and appetite itself is healthy and no long unruly, then is the virtue of temperance actually necessary? Is it present only as a habit though not regularly exercised?

Still this brings up the question of the infused virtues - why does it not seem that they are present when the desire for x is present? Is it the nature of the temptation and our subjective perception?

Frequenting buffet restaurants would seem to reinforce a certain departure from the mean of reason, but not gluttony -- eating excessively for the sake of "getting my money's worth."

*I think meat is used in the body of this question regarding temperance with its older meaning (food in general) rather than its modern meaning. I'd have to look at the Latin original.