Food for Thought

We can all wish for God’s Kingdom to be here now. To be living in a time when the “bread of the increase of the earth…shall be fat and plenteous,” and livestock will “eat clean provender [feed], which has been winnowed with the shovel and with the fan” (Isa. 30:23-24). A time when water will be plentiful and pure, when “the pastures of the wilderness do spring…the tree bears her fruit, the fig tree and the vine do yield their strength” (Joel 2:22). Everyone living in this environment will have access to quality food—completely natural and free from pollutants.

Yet that is not the case today. The health-conscious person has to question the source of every meal. How was this grown? Are there any chemical filler ingredients? What is Yellow 6? Polydimethylsiloxane? Was this oil brominated?

May God’s Kingdom come!

We should all long for days where all food has fresh ingredients, copious amounts of protein, vitamins, minerals, healthy carbohydrates—and zero refined sugars. A time when all foods come straight from the source and land on the table: milk from a cow, eggs from a henhouse, and fish for dinner from a nearby lake. Vegetables pulled from a family garden.

Of course, now it is not so simple. Most people worldwide live in crowded urban areas and do not have access to these kinds of fresh foods. Almost everything found on grocery store shelves is laced with preservatives and chemicals—even if the companies that produce them claim they are not harmful.

The news of deceptive practices by food-science corporations can be equally maddening. Perhaps you have felt the urge to shun the “food” these businesses produce altogether, move to a rural area to farm pasture-raised animals, and grow your own gardens. Yet, as it is for almost all today, this is simply impossible.

Still, God wants us to do the best with what we have. He inspired the apostle John to write, “Beloved, I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers” (III John 1:2). God the Father wants you to be healthy!

The place to start, if you have not already done so, is to review God’s Principles of Healthful Living. This booklet covers all the steps you must take to fulfill John’s (ultimately God’s) desire. And most of the points are simple to remember and apply, such as including aerobic exercises and making sure you drink enough water. Another major point that is covered is eating wholesome food—which is best done by cooking meals at home.

With some guidance, you will find preparing homecooked meals is not intimidating and can be quite fun. Cooking at home allows you to have the confidence of knowing exactly what ingredients go into your meals, which is why they tend to be healthier than restaurant dishes.

On top of all this, cooking your own meals is instrumental in drawing closer to your family and ultimately, your Creator.

Why Cook?

Everyone knows that eating processed food all the time is unhealthy. As the saying goes, if you eat junk, you will feel like junk. But why the connection between processed foods and “junk”?

In his book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, author Michael Pollan explores cooking through four classical elements: fire, water, air and earth. Throughout the text, he compares current culinary trends to those of the past. He makes the case that modern preparation leads to numerous health problems and shapes the view of food for people worldwide.

“Our growing distance from any direct, physical engagement with the processes by which the raw stuff of nature gets transformed into a cooked meal is changing our understanding of what food is. Indeed, the idea that food has any connection to nature or human work, or imagination is hard to credit when it arrives in a neat package, fully formed. Food becomes just another commodity, an abstraction. And as soon as that happens, we become easy prey for corporations selling synthetic versions of the real thing—what I call edible food like substances. We end up trying to nourish ourselves on images.”

Mr. Pollan maintains that people who eat unprocessed foods have a better connection to the environment, which benefits society as a whole.

“Corporations cook very differently from how people do (which is why we usually call what they do ‘food processing’ instead of cooking). They tend to use much more sugar, fat and salt than people cooking for people do; they also deploy novel chemical ingredients seldom found in pantries in order to make their food last longer and look fresher than it really is. So, it will come as no surprise that the decline in home cooking closely tracks the rise in obesity and all the chronic diseases linked to diet.”

Bread is an example of a food that has become so manipulated by companies trying to “make it better” that it now provides very few of the health benefits it once did.

A main reason for this is a desire for companies to get the most bang for their buck where production is concerned.

Realize that bread used to be made naturally by one of the thousands of varieties of natural yeasts in the air. Now it usually contains patented dry yeast, which strips out much of what makes it good for human consumption.

How Did We Get Here?

Following World War II, industries that had helped supply food to the troops needed to find a new consumer base to keep their operations booming.

Their answer? Busy housewives.

“Beginning after World War II, the industry put a lot of effort into selling Americans on the processed food wonders that it had invented to feed the troops,” Mr. Pollan said in a documentary based on his book. “Canned meals, freeze-dried foods, dehydrated potatoes, powdered orange juice and coffee, instant and super convenient everything. Processing food is extremely profitable, much more so than growing it or selling it whole.”

In the documentary, food historian Laura Shapiro said the goal was not only to convince women (many of whom were starting to move into the workforce at that time) that the company could cook better and faster than them for their families, but that their products would make their lives simpler.

At the same time, scientists also began experimenting with how to “fix food” and fortify it with extra nutrients. Notably, it was also at this time that obesity rates and incidences of diseases, such as cancer, began to skyrocket.

Author Melanie Warner echoed this sentiment in Pandora’s Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal: “The trouble with this wholesale remaking of the American meal is that our human biology is ill equipped to handle it…Our many novel and high-tech innovations of food destroy much of its essential geography, resulting in all sorts of unintended consequences. When we start taking food apart and industrially processing it, it often stops making biological sense.”

Case in point: Scientists recently discovered that emulsifiers, additives used to extend a product’s shelf-life and improve its texture, have been linked to a rise in colon cancer—the fourth leading cancer killer in the United States. Emulsifiers are used in everything from ice cream to hamburgers.

“Researchers at Georgia State University say they found that regular consumption of emulsifiers by mice altered intestinal bacteria in a way that contributed to tumor development,” Consumer Affairs reported.

This is just one of many studies that have come out recently linking modified “edible food like substances” to incidences of cancer, heart disease, and obesity.

Messing with nature does not pay when it comes to human health, no matter the justification.

Basic Principles

The booklet God’s Principles of Healthful Living discusses six guidelines on food that are in line with the consensus of health professionals. Here are three of these all-important principles.

First, “Most of your diet (preferably over 60%) should consist of foods in their natural, uncooked or lightly cooked state. Raw vegetables and fruits are superior to those that are cooked. Cooking destroys much of the nutritional value. Many vitamins are partly destroyed, minerals are leached out (if boiled) and all enzymes are destroyed by temperatures over 120 F.

“Sprouting is an excellent way to eat seeds, beans and grains in the raw form. (Sprouting involves harvesting seeds at the point of germination.) Another excellent way is to eat foods such as homemade sauerkraut. Certain foods, like potatoes and yams, dried beans and peas and grains, must be cooked.

“The ideal of eating more than 60% of our vegetables raw is a goal that few are able to attain. However, rather than writing this off as impractical, try to increase your daily intake of salads, sprouts and raw fruits and vegetables. You will be glad you did!

“Due to requiring different digestive enzymes, raw vegetables and fruits should generally be eaten at separate times. Health professionals point out that one or two vegetables appear to be better than a mixture of four or five. Likewise, a fruit salad of two or three kinds of fruit appear to be better digested than one with five or six kinds of fruit. Due to fruit’s cleansing effect, a ‘one or two’ combo fruit salad makes an ideal late evening snack.”

Second, “If possible, foods should be whole, unrefined and grown near your environment. Imported foods can contain bacteria to which your body may not be accustomed.

“When natives of a region eat domestically-grown, natural, whole, unprocessed and unrefined foods, they enjoy wonderful health and long lives. When denatured, refined, processed, manmade foods (such as white sugar and white flour, and canned and processed foods) enter their diets, disease becomes rampant.”

Third, “Pure water, though rare, is vital to the human body. Drink a generous amount daily—some suggest one ounce of water for every two pounds of body weight (0.3 liter per 10 kilograms). Pure water for drinking and cooking should be natural water from a deep well or a mineral spring. Many health professionals recommend the drinking of distilled water because of so many unknown contaminants that affect our water supply and the unpredictable risk in buying what is labeled as ‘pure water.’ When drinking distilled water on a regular basis, consider taking a supplement that supplies such trace minerals as would normally be found in pure water.”

In summary, the more natural our diets, the healthier we will be and the more we will appreciate the God who put the entire food ecosystem together. Be sure to read the other three guidelines in the health booklet for yourself.

Beyond Health

Eating well is not just about fostering better health. Cooking at home has numerous other benefits that extend past the kitchen. It also plays a role in the development of children and has the effect of building up the family.

“Over the past 15 years researchers have confirmed what parents have known for a long time: sharing a family meal is good for the spirit, the brain and the health of all family members,” the Family Dinner Project, a nonprofit organization committed to restoring the concept of families eating dinner together, reported.

“Recent studies link regular family dinners with many behaviors that parents pray for: lower rates of substance abuse, teen pregnancy and depression, as well as higher grade-point averages and self-esteem. Studies also indicate that dinner conversation is a more potent vocabulary-booster than reading, and the stories told around the kitchen table help our children build resilience. The icing on the cake is that regular family meals also lower the rates of obesity and eating disorders in children and adolescents. What else can families do that takes only about an hour a day and packs such a punch?”

Family therapist Anne Fishel, who says she often has the impulse to tell families to have dinner together rather than have an hour-long session with her, provided more details on its benefits in The Conversation. “For starters, researchers found that for young children, dinnertime conversation boosts vocabulary even more than being read aloud to. The researchers counted the number of rare words—those not found on a list of 3,000 most common words—that the families used during dinner conversation. Young kids learned 1,000 rare words at the dinner table, compared to only 143 from parents reading storybooks aloud. Kids who have a large vocabulary read earlier and more easily.”

The dividends keep paying even as young children grow into adolescents. “Adolescents who ate family meals five to seven times a week were twice as likely to get As in school as those who ate dinner with their families fewer than two times a week.”

She further added: “In most industrialized countries, families don’t farm together, play musical instruments or stitch quilts on the porch. So dinner is the most reliable way for families to connect and find out what’s going on with each other. In a survey, American teens were asked when they were most likely to talk with their parents: dinner was their top answer. Kids who eat dinner with their parents experience less stress and have a better relationship with them. This daily mealtime connection is like a seat belt for traveling the potholed road of childhood and adolescence and all its possible risky behaviors.

Wonderful Reminder

There is another connection that happens when we take the time to make our own meals. Using ingredients derived straight from the ground has the added benefit of making you think about the actual source of food. It is not the same as pulling frozen chicken fingers—prepackaged and ready to eat—from the freezer or popping open a can of soup and dumping it into a dish to satisfy a dinner craving.

The next time you are scrubbing dirt off the skin of a carrot that you bought from a farmers’ market, meditate on the little wonder of God’s Creation you are holding. That dirt you are scraping off is a tiny sample of the very soil that incubated and nourished a carrot root into becoming an edible, nutritious, juicy vegetable.

This should sound very reminiscent of another lifeform that was “born in the dirt.”

As with the lowly carrot, human beings have an intrinsic connection to the soil: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7).

The first man, Adam, was formed from “the dust of the ground,” and it is only natural our nourishment comes from the soil as well. Working with the soil’s fruits should bring to mind our own humanity—and humility. It is that same soil that grows the lettuce you chop, the wheat for the flour you mix, or even the grass that feeds the cows for the steak you tenderize. This should teach you about our place in God’s Creation, as well as His purpose behind all the edibles that come from the ground.

The apostle Paul made this connection when preaching in Athens at Mars’ hill. He explained to the polytheistic worshippers that God is the ultimate source of all things—plants and animals—that give and sustain life.

“Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, You men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, to the unknown god. Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwells not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He gives to all life, and breath, and all things” (Acts 17:22-25).

“All things” means just that—“all things”—including the variety of plants and animals for food that sustain us every day.

These plants and animals had to be put in place by someone and for a specific purpose. God wants us to know, through His Word, that He created and ordered the universe for us to be able to live an abundant life (John 10:10).

One of the fascinating ways we can see God’s fingerprints on His Creation is through a concept many of us learned in grade school. Plants grow by converting energy produced by the sun into nourishment, a process called photosynthesis. Along with nutrients from the soil, energy is then stored by the plants and, once eaten by humans, gives us energy to live and breathe. Energy provided by the sun and soil allows for man’s very existence! This simple element within the cycle of life could only have been designed “from the ground up” by a Creator.

Reconnecting with nature by cooking goes far beyond just staying healthy. It helps you to remember God’s Creation, why you were created, and ultimately, what your future holds. It also helps us build tighter bonds with our spouses and children and instill life-enhancing principles that can last for generations.

How thankful are you for all that God has provided, including the many sights, sounds and tastes of His Creation? Strive to never forget God by focusing more and more on the food that He directly created, as opposed to the many “food like” substances created by man.

Experience the joy and satisfaction of preparing and eating meals at home—and never forget who made the variety of plants and animals you eat!