Eating for Health – Part II

By James Ong

Isaiah 55:2 tells us that it is possible to spend money on what is not truly bread that satisfies and nourishes us.  Further, we are told to listen carefully to God’s instructions and eat what is good.  It is thus not enough to know what to eat; we must also know how such God-given foods should be eaten.

Man has taken God’s wonderful foods and subjected them to:  synthetic, man-made, often toxic pesticides, herbicides and fungicides; antibiotics and growth hormones; irradiation, genetic modification; hydrogenation; excessive heat; refining; excessive processing; chemical solvents; bleaching; artificial flavorings, colorings and preservatives.  The latest additives?  Ethylene glycol and melamine!

We do this to increase yields, make foods look better, taste better, easier to process or package, and last longer on the shelves, often at the expense of our health.  In Biblical times and throughout most of human history until the last 100 years or so, man  has never eaten foods that are grown or processed in these ways.  Organic farming and organic foods are now very popular; but if we think about it, for most of human civilization until the 20th century, mankind has subsisted on organic foods.  So, organic foods are nothing new!

Dr. Lorraine Day (www.drday.com), fervent Christian and eminent medical doctor who recovered from advanced breast cancer through following God’s natural healing principles, used to say, “You can’t improve on God!”

The second principle for healthy eating is to eat foods that God has created for our nourishment in a form that is as close to their original, natural state as possible.

In practical terms, we should be going for fresh, relatively unprocessed and naturally or organically-grown foods.  Organic foods may cost a bit more but you are getting real health benefits, besides improving our fragile ecology.  If you are blessed with some land or extra apartment space with exposure to sunlight, why not learn to grow some of your own food?  This ensures the freshest and highest-quality produce.  You will get to enjoy organic food on the cheap!  I think it’s great to be like Adam and Noah, who were both gardener-farmers.  In Biblical times, and even throughout most of human history , man has been cultivating or foraging for his food, even if farming was not his primary vocation.  Sadly, for many of us, we have completely no clue how to grow our own food, which leaves us quite vulnerable.  The connection between man, land and food is so important that laws were given by God so that the Israelites never lost possession of their land because of extreme poverty (rights of redemption in Mosaic law).  Even Levites and priests had some land they could call their own so they could grow their own vegetables, herbs and spices and perhaps some domestic animals like goats, ducks and chickens.

Think about how far we have deviated from God’s original design:

  • God gave us whole wheat kernels and man refined them and ground them into flour which is then used to make white bread with a generous helping of refined sugar and shortening made from margarine or other hydrogenated fat. This yields a dead food that gives mostly refined carbohydrates but is devoid of many of the vitamins, minerals, fiber and essential fatty acids that help us to metabolize and handle the starch properly. When we consume white bread, our blood sugar spikes dangerously and then dips. With regular consumption of it, we set ourselves up for metabolic syndrome, hyperinsulinemia and eventually, diabetes.
  • God gave us corn on the cob and man turned it into commercial popcorn made with rancid Omega-6 oils that have most likely been hydrogenated, turning them into deadly trans-fats. Then we add refined sweeteners to make the popcorn taste better. Again, like white bread, the popcorn spikes our blood sugar and clogs our arteries and sets us up for diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
  • God gave us dairy-producing cows that are supposed to feed primarily on pasture and man, in an effort to squeeze more milk from the poor cows, confine them in crammed feedlots, feeding them with grains that are high in Omega-6 fats and add antibiotics and growth hormones so that they don’t succumb to infection and could grow faster. Then we pasteurize, homogenize and add sugar, artificial coloring and flavors to the milk.

When we think about how vastly different God’s intended diet and our last plate of char kway teow or Hokkien mee or nasi goreng is, then it shouldn’t be surprising that our health is in the doldrums.  The reality is that no matter how hard we pray for God to bless our food, He is unlikely to change junk food to nutritious food (sorry, it’s not every day that God changes water into wine).

Another important implication of the second principle is that we should apply the least amount of processing or heat to our food, if we want to enjoy its fullest nutrient content.  If certain fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds can be consumed raw, we should eat them raw.  A raw pineapple is certainly more nutritious than a cooked or canned pineapple.  Cooking often destroys all of the enzymes in the food.  Most cereal grains, legumes (peas, beans and lentils) need to be soaked and cooked or fermented before we can properly digest the nutrients contained in them.  When cooking is required, use the least amount of heat possible.  Hence, steaming, stir-frying, poaching, braising, baking and boiling are preferable to char-grilling, roasting and deep-frying.  Deep frying is generally the worst way of cooking, especially if it is done with rancid vegetable oils.  Most restaurants and food vendors are guilty of a greater offense.  They use rancid, heat-damaged vegetable oils over and over again to fry their food.  When we consume these foods, we are introducing lots of carcinogens into our bodies.  What we reap is deadly disease that literally cleaves to us.

To eat healthily, it is often necessary to take charge of preparing our own meals.  I know this is almost impossible for most working people.  However, we should at least prepare our own breakfast and dinner, leaving lunch as the only meal of the day that we eat out.  Of course, we can relax a little and eat out for a few meals a week, remembering to choose our meals wisely.  Eating consciously is very important.  Most of us eat mindlessly, letting taste, convenience and price dictate what we buy.  Unfortunately, the sad fact is that most of us do not even know how to cook!  Those who have domestic maids and leave most of the food preparation to them should still guide them on healthy food buying and cooking practices.

Before finishing this section, I think most of us would benefit from knowing how traditional cultures which have not been exposed to modern civilization, fed themselves.

For this, we are indebted to the life work of Dr. Weston A. Price, a Harvard-trained dentist who travelled around the world in the 1930s in search of primitive cultures who had near-perfect teeth, unlike the high number of cavities, crooked teeth and deformed dental arches that he was seeing in his clinic.  Dr. Price and his wife studied these primitive societies at a time when they were just adopting modern diets as a result of exposure to “outsiders” (Western explorers and traders).  This gave them the unique opportunity to compare people who had grown up eating their traditional diet against those that were already consuming modern diets.  Dr. Price found that primitive people consuming their traditional diets exclusively typically enjoyed beautiful straight teeth without decay, wide faces, well formed dental arches, cheerful disposition and strong bodies that demonstrated remarkable resistance to disease; this despite the fact that they had no modern doctors or medical facilities.  The following is a summary of what he discovered (taken from www.westonaprice.org).

Characteristics of Traditional Diets

  1. The diets of healthy primitive and non-industrialized peoples contain no refined or denatured foods such as refined sugar or corn syrup; white flour; canned foods; pasteurized, homogenized, skim or low-fat milk; refined or hydrogenated vegetable oils; protein powders; artificial vitamins or toxic additives and colorings.
  2. All traditional cultures consume some sort of animal protein and fat from fish and other seafood; water and land fowl; land animals; eggs; milk and milk products; reptiles; and insects.
  3. Primitive diets contain at least four times the calcium and other minerals and TEN times the fat soluble vitamins from animal fats (vitamin A, vitamin D and the Price Factor–now believed to be vitamin K2) as the average American diet.
  4. In all traditional cultures, some animal products are eaten raw.
  5. Primitive and traditional diets have a high food-enzyme content from raw dairy products, raw meat and fish; raw honey; tropical fruits; cold-pressed oils; wine and unpasteurized beer; and naturally preserved, lacto-fermented vegetables, fruits, beverages, meats and condiments.
  6. Seeds, grains and nuts are soaked, sprouted, fermented or naturally leavened in order to neutralize naturally occurring anti-nutrients in these foods, such as phytic acid, enzyme inhibitors, tannins and complex carbohydrates.
  7. Total fat content of traditional diets varies from 30% to 80% but only about 4% of calories come from polyunsaturated oils naturally occurring in grains, pulses, nuts, fish, animal fats and vegetables. The balance of fat calories is in the form of saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids.
  8. Traditional diets contain nearly equal amounts of omega-6 and omega-3 essential fatty acids.
  9. All primitive diets contain some salt.
  10. Traditional cultures consume animal bones, usually in the form of gelatin-rich bone broths.
  11. Traditional cultures make provisions for the health of future generations by providing special nutrient-rich foods for parents-to-be, pregnant women and growing children; by proper spacing of children; and by teaching the principles of right diet to the young.

Dr. Price concluded that diet was the only possible factor accounting for such universal good physical health among primitive peoples untouched by modern foods.  Conversely, people who ate the modern diet of Western civilization suffered from physical degeneration and poor brain development.  He believed that social ills such as juvenile delinquency and high crime rates were attributable to dietary deficiencies.  This is now verified by modern scientific research.  That is why he entitled his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. He is widely regarded as the “Charles Darwin of Nutrition.”

I will finish off this article by citing an interesting story from the Bible about nutrition, taken from I Samuel 25.  I would like to draw your attention to v. 18, which gives an account of the food that Abigail, described as an intelligent and beautiful woman, prepared for hungry David and his man, to avert potential bloodshed in her household – two hundred loaves of bread and two jugs of wine and five sheep already prepared and five measures of roasted grain and a hundred clusters of raisins and two hundred cakes of figs.  Isn’t it amazing that the Bible records with such detail the food that Abigail brought to David?  Evidently food was very important to God and He wanted succeeding generations of believers to know how He provided for His beloved children.  Each one of the foods that Abigail prepared belongs in Jonny Bowden’s list of the World’s 150 Healthiest Foods. Abigail must have been quite a nutritionist.  The foods were all organically-grown and unrefined/unprocessed.  Based on her experience and what had been handed down by her ancestors she chose wisely of the best of the land.  No doubt she must have known her Scriptures, for in Deuteronomy 8:7-8, 13, God described essentially the same foods that were representative of His blessings on the nation.

Deuteronomy 8:7-10, 13
7 “For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills; 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; … 13 and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies,

Now the question that must be asked is this:  if we were asked to bring food to feed a group of hungry brethren, numbering between 400, what would we bring?  Something along the same lines?  I hope it would not be char kway teow, chee cheong fun, mee goreng, nasi lemak, Indian rojak, hamburgers, French fries, doughnuts, char siew pau, white bread, kaya, margarine, soft drinks, canned drinks, teh tarik, kopi-o, etc.  May God help us to make wise food choices.  Granted, living in this day and age, it has become much harder to make healthy choices because we are surrounded by so much junk.  Let’s not give up.  After all, we are not to conform to the pattern of this world but to be transformed through the renewing of our minds and offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God (Romans 12:1-2).