Dining with Jesus:
Advice on Diet
March 30, 2015
by William P. Meyers

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I am an atheist, but on occasion I find myself in accord with traditional religious teachings. When there is a real basis for advice, it stands up to testing. It does not require attribution to a god.

"Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man." - Bible, Matthew 15:11

This was attributed to Jesus of Nazareth, who has been mistaken by his followers for a god. I don't agree with some of the specific Christian interpretations of what constituted "defileth", but the general idea is good (and I love the archaic language). What you eat is not all that important.

I say this because I have met a lot of people who are entangled in their own nutritional nets. They worry about their health, they worry themselves to death about diet. And on top of that, they tend to gravitate to any of a variety of very bad ideas about what a human diet should be.

This hysteria seems to run across the political spectrum, the religious spectrum, and even across the economic spectrum.

They are worse than the Pharisees of Jesus's era. The Pharisees were very strict about following rules, including dietary rules, like Orthodox Jews today. But according to Jesus they were not good people, because they broke the big rules (not of diet, but of compassion, empathy, and ethics). Most of the food rules people follow today involve knocking out specific foods or food groups. In other words, the diets consist of systems of taboos.

People think their lives and in particular health will be better if they follow the taboos. In some cases ethics are brought into play, as when people don't want to eat dead animals. Often the taboos are based on pseudoscience.

People act as if gluten and all wheat products are poison. Some extend this hysteria to all carbohydrates. The Neanderthal, I mean Paleo diet has a bunch of rules that you can bet people in the Paleocene did not follow. Others avoid red meat, or only eat "organic" foods. Some insist that to avoid dying of cancer you must eat large quantities of berries (because they allegedly have anti-oxidants). The list is pretty endless.

I pretty much skewered the vegan ethical argument already (see Gardening, Vegans, and Death). I see no point to analyzing each and every crazy diet.

Eat your vegetables. Don't eat too much desert or sugary drinks. Mainly, if you are overweight, eat less of everything (and that includes drinking). Exercise more. If you are not shitting regularly, eat more bran cereal or cole slaw. Farting? That is a sign of intestinal bacterial health, not of bad diet. That is really all you need to know about diet.

Life ends in death. Accept it. Get on with life.

Focus on what you can control and on what truly distinguishes between basically good and basically bad people. Watch what come out of your mouth, but don't just talk a good line. Act on your best considered judgment.

Pay attention to the results of your actions. If you don't get the results that you want, maybe you should try something different.

Don't worry so much about what goes into your mouth. Your body has 3 billion years of evolutionary experience at converting almost any kind of organic matter into tissue and energy.

Do something good with your exercise. Don't waste time in a gym. Clean up your home and garden, help take care of your neighbors and neighborhood and the wider world.

Don't just have an opinion about the environment or politics or business. "Faith, if it hath not works, is dead ... I will shew thee my faith by my works." Bible, James 2:17-18

Agree? Disagree? You can comment on this post at Natural Liberation Blog at blogspot.com