God and Diet ...

You are what you eat, as the saying goes. If true, I must be a pizza, as I began my love affair with them in the form of maternal cravings my mother would get at 3:00 am and my poor father would have to try to accommodate in the late night streets of Los Angeles. Not much has changed in the 4 decades or so since then, other than developing hereditary dairy intolerance at age 30. Unaware of this condition, my solution was to eat even more pizza, you know, to clog me up. BZZZ, but thank you for playing – as anyone with IBS or dairy intolerance can attest, it will have quite the opposite effect. My solution – eat even more pizza. Finally a coworker clued me in on the facts, and with a reduction of dairy, my condition became manageable (for me and anyone in smelling distance). For me, much loved pizza is the dietary equivalent of Drain-o.

Americans have recently become known for being the most obese nation on the planet. With the excess of wealth (comparatively as even our poor are better off than the poor around the world) comes convenience and speed in our diets. Quality, not so much, but speed and low cost, we have in abundance. Our low quality, quick access meals, have led us to become nice and fat. Well at least fat. Apparently only the French are known to be more rude than a traveling American. And despite our condition, the news media is full of stories on how to eat better. Talk shows cover the latest fad diets. Info-commercials go on endlessly about the relative merits of their respective programs. Weight Watchers uses a support group approach with a controlled recommended diet. Everyone has a solution for our obesity, except the hungry guy in the mirror. His idea; more pizza of course.

So amidst all the fray, what does our God have to say on the subject of food, anything? Actually yes, He has quite a lot to say, but let’s begin with His original intentions for our diets. Get ready and hold on to your seats, you’re gonna love this one. Energy. Yup, that is pretty much the summation of God’s original factory made dietary plan. Energy. Not the kind of energy you commonly think about, such as the nourishment that may help you jog longer, or actually get up off the sofa. No, I am talking about converting whatever it is that you eat completely into the minerals, vitamins, electricity, and chemicals your body needs for survival on an infinite time scale with zero waste, and zero by-products. You see, another nasty truth about evil, is the curse to our bodies requiring a waste disposal system. It was not required in our original design, but had to be activated with our introduction to evil. No longer could our bodies be allowed to convert food into pure energy allowing us to live forever, as then evil would live with us forever, and we would know no end to our depravity. Thus food went from pure energy to only a subset of what we need, with plenty of waste that needs to be processed.

With the introduction of evil, came lust, greed, sloth, and depravity. All of these characteristics influenced our dietary habits. Taste became the paramount objective in fulfilling our dietary desires, and health concerns became a long-gone after thought. Decadence in diet was born. Exotic things and rare things became the highly prized and highly desired things. Oysters for example, no one can imagine eating one, until someone does, and now everyone considers them an aphrodisiac. I guess there has to be some reward for eating what looks to me like raw buggers from a child’s nose. The more unusual the food, the more our taste buds were conditioned to think it was “good”. And today, there is no lack of variety in our meat selections, no restrictions in how we prepare our foods, and no limits to the heart attack rates, obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes we develop as a result of our choices, and service to our taste buds.

Ever watch someone smoke for the first time. The predictable impulse to cough, is our body trying to defend itself from what it knows will kill us. But with persistence, we can overcome our body’s natural defense mechanisms until lung cancer terminates the process. The same effect happens when someone drinks alcoholic beverages for the first time. The natural inclination for our taste buds is to poo-poo the idea of drinking. But given enough persistence and connoisseurs can tell which red wine deserves to be in the $500 bottle and which one should be served in a box. In short, what we like, is what we condition ourselves to like. And most of the time, like in every other aspect of our lives when not submitted to the will of Christ, what we like is what will inevitably destroy us.

As with every other aspect of evil, the master deceiver paints our addiction to what would destroy us as the last remaining element of “fun” in our lives. To have to give up something we like to eat or drink, becomes tantamount to losing a foot. And so we cling to our dietary desires, fulfilling them with regularity, and suffering the inevitable consequences all the while asking why me, and how could God let this happen. As if God was silent on the matter. No such luck, or perhaps better worded, no such absence of loving guidance. God did not abandon us to our embrace of evil in our dietary world. Instead He setup for us His original modified diet. The first proposal was fruits, grains, and nuts. This is sometimes referred to as the Eden diet plan. It is said the tribe that lives high in the Andes mountains of south America still eats only these foods, and has an average life expectancy of 110. Of course, they have less pollution and a more active lifestyle as well.

Fearing that His simple plan would not be enough to satisfy the cravings our diets would impose, God amended His original simple plan to include vegetables and herbs. This second plan is more commonly known as vegetarianism, or a vegan diet (if you exclude animal by-products such as eggs, milk, and cheese entirely). The inclusion of the second set of ingredients to our diet offers us massive variety in what we can find to eat. But alas, evil was not satisfied with allowing us health, and so suggested that we needed to augment our bodies with the nourishment found in other life forms than plants – namely in animals, or living creatures. And so “meat” was introduced into the human diet. It was not God’s intent that any of His creations should have to die to supply man with food, but He reluctantly allowed the practice to occur with some additional guidelines.

Cannibalism is strictly forbidden, as is impersonating a vampire by trying to drink blood or eat raw fat. Animals were divided into two categories, the clean (of which we could eat) and the unclean (which we were to be forbidden to eat). Most farm animals (short pigs) fell into the clean category. Most exotic animals fell into the unclean. Fish were similarly divided, even insects segregated should anyone get that desperate. The preparation of meat was to remove as much blood and fat as possible, leaving what would be healthiest for us to consume. Jews and Muslims still adhere to these dietary ideals to this day as a matter of religious practice, though Christians have differing ideas on the topic. These distinctions predate Moses, as they were likely told by mouth to Adam and father to son for his descendants. At the flood, the distinction was evident again by how God moved the animals into the ark. Seven of the clean, only two of the unclean went with Noah during the flood. Those who believe this to be advice only for Moses, miss the larger lesson here.

So then, if we are trying to live a healthier lifestyle, and wish not to let our taste buds determine our destiny, there are some God given guidelines we could choose to observe. First, eat way more fruits, grains, and nuts. Second, augment our diet plans with a variety of vegetables. Third, eat clean animal by-products if we feel we must. Fourth, consume meat if there is no other way to obtain our dietary requirements than this source, but keeping only to clean meats, prepared with an effort to minimize blood and fat content. By following these proscribed dietary plans, we would inevitably reduce our health risks, and increase our quality of life. That is not what I call a sacrifice, it is what I call a blessing.

But what about our taste buds, do we have to eat food that tastes like dirt in order to be healthy? No. But remember that we condition our taste buds to like what we want them to like. They rarely act independently from our mental ambitions. As it happens, pizza is a vegetarian dish. It does contain animal byproducts in the cheese (oh how I love mozzarella), but then has tomatoes in the sauce, and I love to put mushrooms and onions as toppings. I spice up the pie with herbs like fresh ground black pepper, garlic, basil, oregano, cayenne pepper, and sometimes I even add sesame seeds for flavor. The crust is bread which comes from grains. So you would think I was eating right off of heaven’s menu. Being a pizza connoisseur I can tell you where the best places are in the country from all my travels. “Cove Pizza” in Stamford CT remains a favorite, “Mellow Mushroom” in northeast Atlanta, “Brother’s Pizza” in west Houston, “Pizzeria Tra Vigne” in Napa CA, and “Papa Anthony’s” in Orlando to name a few. Yet despite being on the “approved” list, this food still does damage to me personally.

While God wishes for us to enjoy our food, He also encourages temperance and balance in how we live including in our diets so that we can fully enjoy our lives. I can in fact, eat pizza, as long as I do not eat it every day. I could choose to eat things on the “non-recommended” list if I chose, but I see no benefit in that. If there is a reason why God segregated food in the first place, then perhaps I should trust His priorities and wisdom on the matter, after all it was He who wrote the owner’s manual so to speak. This is the core of the issue where it comes to dietary practices, do we trust God that all of His advice is for our benefit or not? If we do trust Him, then there should be no expiration date on what He recommends for our health and welfare. We can look forward and realize there will be no “meat” in heaven, so it may not be a good idea to become too dependent on it as a food source, if other choices are available. After all, God only allowed meat in our diets reluctantly, and with a fair degree of restrictions.

But then to know God, is to love God. God did not create our taste buds in order for us to suffer at the loss of excellent tasting food. In fact, quite the opposite. High quality food, tends to take time in the preparation and tends to taste wonderful. The kicker is, it is usually good for us as well. Fresh fruit, organically grown, with natural pesticides, and out of the way of pollution is some of the best fruit one can consume. Marion Berries (a large cousin of the blackberry) grows along the freeways of Portland Oregon and has a taste I have yet to match. But then, I imagine that in heaven the taste of Marion Berry’s will be infinitely better than here on earth as heaven will not suffer the effects of our sin. Everything in heaven will taste so MUCH better than what we can even imagine. Our taste buds are not a result of sin, they have just suffered from it. We will eat in heaven, and the food will not be open for comparison with anything this world has to offer.

I intend to make my own pizza in heaven. I will build a brick oven to cook it in. I will plant the grains to grow the wheat for the crust. I will milk the cows, and create the cheese (hope some bacteria survives). I will plant the mushrooms, onions, tomatoes and herbs I require. I may even open a Pizzeria for free once I get the process down right. I expect my love affair with pizza will find no equal in a place where perfection is the norm. My obesity will no longer be a side effect, and I imagine I will eat only what I need. And best of all, no more dairy intolerance, no more waste disposal, only pure Energy as God originally intended. Until that day, I take my taste buds to the foot of the cross, and ask for Christ to intervene yet again in my life. I ask Him to affect my appetite and my desires for food, to conform to the things He would like me personally to consume. My diet may be different from yours as my health issues are different than yours. But this is the beauty of submission to Christ, He takes that kind of personal interest in us, so as to perfect what we alone require to eat to stay healthy, and not give up an ounce of what we “like” as what we “like” conforms to His will and what we actually need. This is a diet plan I can live with.