I don't think it's a bad practice. I just don't think it's good to mandate things that were not mandated by Jesus. It's one of the reasons I left Rome - that train just went off the rails.
The Orthodox Church is not Rome, and furthermore, there are many cases where fasting is not required. My confessor has not allowed me to fast since 2014, when symptoms of what turned out to be a hereditary illness which includes substantial problems with digestion became substantially worse. There are periods of time when fasting is theoretically prohibited, such as Bright Week, although some might not apply that to the Eucharistic fast.
But, most importantly, fasting before the Eucharist is scriptural: firstly, bread Is broken at the beginning of a Jewish meal, so your suggestion he did it in the middle of the meal is entirely unsupported; no Scripture says that the disciples had already written, and if you observed Jews eat their traditional meal on the eve of Sabbath, it begins with the breaking of bread (delicious Challah bread in the Ashkenazi tradition, except when unleavened bread is required). Wine follows, and then meat or dairy courses. And the Berakot blessings from which the Eucharistic liturgies of the Christian church were derived (this being especially evident in the ancient Liturgy of Addai and Mari, used by the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East, the Chaldean Catholic Church, and the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church), which has seven sections, like the Berakot prayers, and is one of the two oldest known liturgies, the other being the ancient liturgy of Alexandria in Egypt, known in its minor variants as the Divine Liturgy of St. Mark, the Divine Liturgy of St. Cyril and the Divine Liturgy of St. Serapian of Thmuis, which is also the oldest attested liturgy, with the Strasbourg Papyrus dating from the second century, and it also closely follows the Berakot pattern, and is regularly used by the Coptic Orthodox and occasionally by the Eastern Orthodox).
Secondly, and more importantly, while our Lord said His disciples did not fast while He was with them, He did say they would fast after He had gone. And fasting has thus been established as a continual practice of the Christian Church since the very beginning.
Furthermore, all evidence indicates that pre-Eucharistic fasting has always been the norm throughout the history of the Early Church, except perhaps during Bright Week (the week starting with Easter Sunday, or Pascha as we call it in Orthodoxy, and St. Thomas Sunday, or Low Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter, when all Christian churches historically read the resurrection narrative from the Gospel of John where St. Thomas physically contacts the wounds of our Lord and exclaims “My Lord and my God!”
Now, I don’t care if you fast or not, but I recommend you do so if you can, and otherwise engage in prayer to prepare yourself for the Eucharist, lest you partake unworthily, not discerning the Body and Blood of our Lord.
However, I do object you taking what is an ancient and pious tradition, which is fully scripturally supported and also consistent with everything we know about Jewish culture before, during and after the Second Temple period, and twisting it around in order to score points at the Catholic Church and “the Orthodox.” While ignoring the fact that there are two different Orthodox communions, the Eastern Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox, which while closely related and in many respects similar, have been separated by an unfortunate schism since the year 451 AD, so more than 75% of the time since the Incarnation (although I hope, God willing, the schism will soon end, and there are signs of this, like the 1991 ecumenical agreement between the Eastern Orthodox Antiochian Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Syriac Orthodox Church, and a similiar agreement between the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria and the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, and further bonding between these four churches due to Islamic persecution including terror attacks, and in Syria, the kidnapping of the Syriac and Antiochian Metropolitans of Aleppo in 2013, and attempted genocides of both churches by ISIS and the Al Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra. And you also ignore the fact that many Protestants, including High Church Anglicans, also observe a pre-Eucharistic fast.
In addition, John Wesley sought to revive among Methodists the Patristic practice of fasting on both Wednesday and Friday, and if the Methodists in North America had followed his instruction, every Methodist church in the United States would gather on Wednesday and Friday to pray a modified version of the Litany from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, which John Wesley adjusted for use in America, producing the Sunday Service Book for Use of the Methodists in North America.
Lastly I would point out that the Catholics and the Orthodox and the Assyrian and Ancient Church of the East, which also unlike most Protestant churches have Apostolic succession (the four Christian communions that existed before the Reformation in Western Europe began with the Waldensians were the Eastern Orthodox, the Oriental Orthodox, the Roman Catholics, and the Church of the East, which was also the largest in the world in terms of geographic area, and probably membership, but represented the majority of the population only in India, on the island of Socotra in Yemen, and in parts of Mesopotamia and Persia, and it was the victim of a genocide initiated by the Muslim warlord Tamerlane, who is venerated as a national hero in Uzbekistan, that killed off all of its members outside of the region of the Fertile Crescent in greater Mesopotamia (now divided between Iraq, Iran and Syria), and those in Kerala and the Malabar Coast of India. Socotra was invaded by Muslims and the Christians who would not convert were killed, and the same fate occurred to all the Christians of Central Asia, China, Mongolia, and Tibet, where it seems probable the Buddhists were at the very least unwilling to defend the Christians - Buddhist persecution of Christians has happened, for example, the brutal murder of most Japanese Christians who had been evangelized by Portuguese Roman Catholics.
Indeed, the reason why for many centuries only the Dutch were allowed to trade with Japan, and were limited to the port of Yokohama, was the Dutch agreed not to try to convert the Japanese, and the Japanese did not even trust the Dutch that much, so limited their access to the port city. Meanwhile, the Roman Catholics attempted to convert the Chinese, but were unsuccessful, but the Orthodox managed to convert most of the Slavs, Siberians and a large percentage of Native Alaskans, and many Central Asians, even some Uzbekistans, during the time when Uzbekistan was part of the Russian Empire.
Speaking of martyrdom, In the 20th century, the majority of Christians to be killed were Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Assyrians, and Roman Catholics, due to the fact that predominantly Orthodox, Assyrian and Catholic regions either fell under the control of the atheist Soviet Union, or for a brief period the racist anti-Slavic Nazis, who killed many Catholics and Orthodox in Eastern Europe, and also Protestants, but except in the Baltic States, which have a Lutheran majority and an Orthodox minority, and which were conquered by the Soviet Union as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (previously they had been something of a haven for pious Russian Orthodox Christians), and after WWII, in Albania, where the population is about 60% Muslim and the rest are Orthodox or Roman Catholic, such as Mother Theresa, the dictator Enver Hoxha attempted to eliminate all religions, whether Sunni Muslim, Bektashi Sufis (who are nominally Shi’a Muslims), Roman Catholics, or Orthodox Christians. Indeed all but a hundred or so Christian priests were killed. Fortunately, many Albanians fled abroad, and Archbishop Fan Noli was received into the Orthodox Church in America, where he founded the Albanian Archdiocese, which kept Albanian Orthodoxy alive, and also wrote one of the first English language books containing the propers for most services throughout the years, the other being written by the Antiochian Fr. Seraphim Nasser (it remains in use, and is affectionately nicknamed “the Nasser Five Pounder” due its weight, although the book is an Octavo, rather than the larger Folio size, which probably makes it less expensive to print but also makes it a bit bulkier - I prefer folios, which is also what you get if you print a book on a computer printer, except for novels, where the risk of spoilers makes smaller page sizes such as those of an octavo, or better yet, a duodecimo, ideal.
At any rate, since the downfall of communism, persecution in the aftermath of communism has continued due to sectarian and ethnic conflicts engendered by the artificial borders drawn up by the communist regimes, with the worst persecution of Christians being the ethnic cleansing of Armenians by Azerbaijan, which receives substantial aid and support from Turkey; meanwhile Armenia receives very little aid, relatively speaking, because it is theoretically supposed to be a Russian ally, but in practice, the Russians failed to stop the 2020 invasion by the Azeris. This has been the most recent ethnic cleansing by Muslims, following the massive persecutions in the 2010s in Syria, Iraq and in 2012 in Egypt by the short lived government of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was thankfully overthrown by the Egyptian people, but Copts have endured continual terrorist attacks ever since. Also, due to a stupid Muslim law which is applied to everyone in Egypt, even Christians, adoption of children is forbidden, so if a Christian child becomes orphaned because his parents are killed in a terrorist attack, his only option is to live in an orphanage. Fortunately the Coptic Orthodox Church and the other Christians in Egypt, such as the Greek Orthodox and the Coptic Catholics, have excellent orphanages. In Ethiopia, the government is controlled by Christians, but some provinces have a Muslim majority, and there are areas in the country where violence against Christians is routine. in Ethiopia, the vast majority of Christians are Ethiopian Orthodox; and have also been martyred in the border region and while working in neighboring countries by ISIS and its allies, such as the deadly Kenyan Muslim Shiftas and the Somali terrorists known as Al-Shahaab.
There have been many Protestant martyrs as well, but the Catholics and especially the Orthodox and Assyrians have born the brunt of it. In the 1915 genocide Against the Christians of the Ottoman Empire, the majority of ethnic Armenians, several million people, were killed, including nearly all Armenian Catholics, who numbered several hundred thousand before the genocide, and We’re the largest Eastern Catholic Church, and since the genocide have been one of the smallest (they have a beautiful monastery in Venice, however). 95% of Syriac Orthodox and Assyrian Christians were killed. Of the Pontic Greeks, who were the majority of Greeks living in what is now Turkey, about two thirds were killed, and the rest were forced to emigrate to Greece as a result of the population exchange of 1920, resulting in an almost complete ethnic cleansing. This is why several important churches mentioned in the Bible, such as the churches at Ephesus, Smyrna, Laodicea and to a large extent even Antioch, no longer exist (there is still a cave in Antioch owned by the Syriac Orthodox Church where liturgies occasionally are celebrated, but the city does not have much in terms of a stable permanent Christian population; indeed even the historic Syriac Orthodox region of Tur Abdin in Turkey, one of the places along with Damascus, Bethlehem and Jerusalem, the Nineveh Plains, Tikrit and Baghdad, where most Syriac Orthodox have originated from, is now mostly depopulated; this area was until the genocide the home of the Patriarchate, but since that time the Patriarchate has been headquartered in Damascus, which is also home to the Antiochian Orthodox Patriarch.
When we add in the mostly Christian peasants in Ukraine and rural areas of Russia and other parts of the Soviet Union who starved under Stalin’s forced agricultural collectivization, we can say that Eastern Orthodox, Catholics, Oriental Orthodox and Lutherans (who coincidentally represent the largest, second largest and third largest ethnic groups in Ukraine), and Assyrians and Anglicans, who represent the largest Protestant church world wide and who have experienced horrible persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh and even in India, from both Muslims and Hindus, and also from Muslims in various African countries, have accounted for the majority of martyrs in the past 150 years. Other Christian populations have also experienced martyrdom, such as members of the Hungarian Reformed Church, and its counterparts in Romania, and these deserve to be honored as well.
It is an Orthodox belief that anyone who dies confessing Christ is instantly saved and instantly are worthy of veneration as being holy, and this is also a Scriptural belief, since our Lord said “anyone who confesses me before men I shall confess before the Father.” Thus there is also a category of confessors, who are people who were tortured or mistreated for their faith in Christ; this group also includes those who died as a result of their torture or mistreatment, as opposed to martyrs, who died from an intentional effort to kill, such as beheading or crucifixion. Confessors also automatically are saved and are venerated as holy.
