Food for Thought

Have you ever listened to the comments in a buffet line?  Recently I heard a mom “teaching” her youngster about the different foods.  It struck me that her attitudes and ideas were a pretty good reflection of the prevailing viewpoints of today’s popular culture.

In a nutshell, it pretty much boiled down to this: it’s all poison.  “This has too much fat, this has too many carbs, this will do such and such to you”, on and on.  I don’t know what the poor child finally ended up with…maybe a few pieces of dry, raw broccoli…or maybe someone has “discovered” that broccoli also is now bad for you.  Think about it…with this kind of thing coming to kids from TV, radio, teachers, internet, parents, friends and I hate to say it…sometimes from church…is it any wonder that we are seeing “eating disorders”, something that was pretty much unheard of in past generations?

How many times have you sat at the table only to hear someone point out how practically everything on the table is somehow bad for you?  But what does God say?  Let’s put aside discussions of Old Testament dietary laws for another time and focus for a minute on a broader principle:

…Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:  For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.    -I Timothy 4: 3-5

Food is mentioned over and over throughout the Bible, and repeatedly cited as a blessing from God, and often cited as a sign of God’s blessing on our lives.  Popular culture has turned this upside-down, and treated food as a necessary evil.  Aside from restaurant commercials we hear constant negativity toward food.

Of course there are some pitfalls with food.  Gluttony is condemned by God.  Today’s foods come with varying levels of processing.  It seems evident that highly processed foods carry some problems with them.  This should be no surprise, since food, as created by God, is for our benefit; common sense tells us, then, that artificially altering it takes it away from the beneficial characteristics instilled in it by the Creator.  Wise counsel would be to stick with whole foods, as close to natural as practical.

Those over age 20 or so can remember the time when eggs were certain to kill you.  After that fad ran its course, it is now acknowledged that our grandparents, great grandparents, and all previous generations were right…eggs are good for you in moderation.  Some of us skipped the fad and enjoyed eggs all along.  We weren’t fashionable, but we enjoyed our breakfast… and our bodies had enough protein.

How disheartening to read a dessert menu with great desserts having “sinful” or “decadent” as part of their names.  Taken as part of a well balanced diet they are a blessing from God, and it is an insult to Him to name them in such ways.  It may be intended to be “cute”, but it’s not funny at all if you think about it.

The characteristics of a well-balanced diet have been understood for millennia…better understood than the government’s “food pyramid”, which seems to need regular revision. The evil of civil government interfering with the diets of citizens is a topic for another time.

Some of us could stand to lose a few pounds; we need to consider this in deciding what to eat.

There’s nothing wrong with (and a lot right with) the study of proper nutrition.  Some have health conditions that demand prohibition or regulation of certain foods.  These are important considerations. Otherwise, let’s be careful how we allow bad thinking to give us a bad attitude towards food, robbing us of blessings that God intended for us.