Thought for Food

The Bible is a book about life. God is the source of all life so it would follow that a Book by God (the Bible) would be about life. The Bible also talks a lot about death...the consequence of sin. Which is essentially trying to find an existence outside of God's moral order. And, that leads to death. Think abortion for one. Promiscuity leads to death just as obesity leads to death. Same difference.

Although the Bible is not a book about food, it has a lot to say about food. Here are just a few thoughts ruminating in my mind. Chew on these:

Red Meat is supposedly bad for us. A new study has come out that correlates the consumption of red meat with an earlier death. Besides the study being methodologically weak, would God commend meat to man if it was bad? Seriously. Better to investigate what type of meat (grass fed or corn fed), how cooked, and what accompanies red meat as sides (super-sized fries), deadly diet soda (Nutrasweet is poison) or sugary Pop, and lifestyle correlates like exercise. Being against the eating of meat is a sign of apostasy in the New Testament.

Eggs were once the mainstay of breakfast. But, the cholesterol scare switched a lot of people over to refined carb breakfast cereal. That is an awful trade. Jesus makes a point that a caring Dad would not give  his child a scorpion instead of an egg. If eggs were bad for us, this saying would be like saying that eggs are dietary scorpions. We have learned that organic eggs elevate good cholesterol and have not much an affect on bad cholesterol as long as people aren't eating a six-pack a day. They are nutritional powerhouses, full of essential proteins and etc. If I was poor, the first thing I would do is find a healthy source of eggs, not the denatured crap that they sell at most stores.

Milk is also viewed as a negative by some and I would agree that drinking the secretions of a steroidal cow is far from healthy, but milk itself is not the problem. How God call the Promise Land "the land of milk and honey" if milk was bad for us? Again, would God, the author of Life, commend milk as a sign of his goodness if it were bad? Find grass-grazed cow milk and drink up.

Bread is good, contrary to the tenets of the Atkins Diet, yet not the refined flour crud that we consume. Essentially, sugar by another name because that it what it becomes once it enters your mouth and starts to get broken down quickly. Grains should be hearty and heavy, not light and airy. Our snack industry creates millions of tons of refined carb crap and it is one of the factors of our high obesity rates as well as escalating Diabetes. Would Jesus have performed the feeding of the 5,000 and the 4,000 with bread if it was awful for humanity? One who was so concerned about life and even called Himself the Bread of Life?

Wine, I have ranted for years is good, against the stupid arguments from evangelicals of the pietistic strain who state that the wine of the Bible was watered down, essentially grape juice. Not so. Do you know that the Bible equates water-downed wine with unethical compromise? Check it out in Isaiah 1:22. No, God gives us the real thing with alcohol and commands us to be wise and moderate in consumption.

Oil is considered a healer in the Bible but for how long have diet gurus advocated a low-fat diet? Again, we have to ask the question, what type of oils, for there are good fats and bad. Research indicates that the lack of healthy fats in our diets, along with avoidance of sunshine, is behind many of our auto-immune diseases in America like arthritis and other illnesses. Stands to reason, what happens to a car if you don't put oil in it? Well, the friction causes it to overheat and fall apart. What happens to the body if it doesn't have oil, well duh.

Greens, it would follow that since a good deal of the world is green vegetation that it would be wise to eat  a good deal of it. Sometimes we get in silly arguments about vegetarianism vs. meat eating. It is not an either/or. A salad of organic greens--not just Lettuce--Spinach, Arugula, Cabbage, with some solid meat tossed in, and an Olive Oil and Vinegar dressing, is nature's bounty.    

One last thing, all of these thoughts about the healthy nature of demonized foods above comes directly from the Bible. Since the Bible is God's Revelation to man, we can take it as Gospel Truth. I don't need any Government Pyramid to tell me what to eat, the great government Pharaoh nutritionist in the sky.