Three Small Shifts in Your Diet That Will Make a Big Difference
You have a clear choice. You can live longer and healthier than ever before, or you can do what most modern populations do: eat to create disease and a premature death.
Dr. Joel Fuhrman
So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
1 Corinthians 10:31
A new baby always brings new perspective. If you have children, think about the moments right after they came screaming into the world. While you probably believed in the miracle of God’s creation before, something about seeing a new life appear in front of you woke you up to just how incredible God is—and how much effort he has put into making each one of us.
Psalm 139:13–14 says, “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (NKJV). Wow. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. Do you feel like it? Do you walk through each day embracing that truth? You are a product of a generous, intelligent Creator who crafted you in his image. He gave you a beating heart and lungs to breathe.
Not only did he create you and me but he also placed us in a world specifically designed to sustain us in health and wholeness. He gave us food to nourish us and water to quench our thirst. He told us to get busy working the land. He told us that if we follow his ways, we will be blessed with long life (1 Kings 3:14). And many of our earliest ancestors—those who ate a more primitive diet and lived a more active lifestyle than we do—often lived to a vibrant, healthy old age.
Things look a little different today. Our collective health choices have put us on a downward spiral toward chronic illness and early death. A hundred years ago, lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer were rare. In many cultures—those that have never stopped eating the way generations before us did—that is still the case. Yet for those of us living in modern, westernized countries, these types of diseases have become commonplace.
Like fish in water, most of us have a hard time recognizing our own environment. We need a wake-up call. We need a paradigm shift. We need to grasp the fact that we are bringing so much of the pain of poor health on ourselves. Most of the ailments filling our prayer request lists are reversible—better yet, altogether preventable—with some simple dietary changes. The cliché is scientific truth: we are what we eat. And what we eat is killing us. It is time to get back to the basics and begin nourishing our bodies the way God intended. It is time to start taking responsibility for what we put in our mouths.
Back to Basics
What if you woke up tomorrow morning and found the car of your dreams sitting in your driveway? Imagine that an anonymous do-gooder heard that you had always wanted a Range Rover (or a Lamborghini, or a new, top-of-the-line Cadillac . . . whatever it may be) and decided to leave one parked where your old car sat the night before. How would you react? How excited would you be?
More to the point, how would you treat that car? I bet I can guess. You would keep it clean, you wouldn’t let the kids eat in it, you would make sure it was serviced on time, and you would give it the premium fuel that the manufacturer meant for it to have, wouldn’t you? There is no way you would risk hurting it by filling it with a lower grade of gas than it needed to function as it was supposed to. After all, not only would that be a slap in the face to the person who gave you the gift, but it would also keep you from being able to enjoy this dream come true at peak performance for as long as possible.
Amazingly, we all understand this concept when it comes to taking care of a car, but when it comes to our own bodies, we don’t make the connection. Here is the reality: God gave you a fantastic gift. He gave you an intricately designed body, specially formed for the purpose of being his representative on this earth. He gave you breath to fill your lungs and a pumping heart to circulate your blood. He gave you a mind capable of more than you can fathom. He placed your soul inside this meticulously crafted vessel and handed it over to you as a gift. How are you treating it? Are you treating it as well as you would treat that car? What are you pouring into it on a daily basis to make sure it operates well for the long haul?
When you eat the foods that keep your body healthy, you are cooperating with God’s best plan for your health. By taking responsibility for your food choices, you are being a good steward of the one and only body he has entrusted to you. Unfortunately, cultural norms and free will have thwarted God’s best intentions for the majority of us—but it is not too late. You can get back to the health God wants you to have. You can work with him rather than against him by making better choices, starting today. God won’t do this for you. To do so, he would have to go against the natural laws of cause and effect that he put in place. But if you do your part to be healthy, you can trust God to bless your efforts.
Part of the problem is that we overcomplicate things. God’s prescription for health is pretty simple: eat the foods he created in the closest possible form to their original creation. In other words, eat an apple, not an apple fritter. Eat a piece of wild salmon, not a microwavable fish stick. As Jordan Rubin wrote in The Maker’s Diet:
Most Americans eat great quantities of food frequently, based on convenience. In fact, the entire fast food [industry has] flourished due to our fast-paced lifestyles. . . . Unfortunately, the Creator didn’t design our bodies to operate at optimum levels on junk food, fast food, or prepackaged foods. His laws that govern our entire human nature, including our health, bring consequences when violated, whether or not we accept the fact that they are still in place.1
To reclaim your health and begin functioning the way God intended, you have to get back to his original plan for your eating habits. You have to get back to basics.
Here are three overarching guidelines that have the power to revolutionize your health and put you back on the path to wellness.
Then God said, “Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food.” (Gen. 1:29)
Living foods are the fruits, vegetables, beans, and grains God created specifically to fuel our bodies. They are made up of nutrients and enzymes specifically designed to work in connection with our bodies’ systems to sustain health and energy. In their natural state, fruits, vegetables, beans, and grains are so nutritionally complex that many of the healthful compounds within them haven’t even been identified. For example, a tomato contains more than ten thousand different phytochemicals, all of which work together to benefit the body.2 The range and composition of these phytochemicals is so involved that scientists are still trying to identify the details of God’s craftsmanship.
Then there is the other end of the spectrum. Processed, packaged foods can be considered dead foods. While living foods are foods that God made, dead foods are foods created or drastically altered (think potato chips rather than fresh potatoes) by humans. The name “dead foods” is appropriate because not only do they contain no living energy but they will also lead you down the fast track toward sickness and death if you eat enough of them. Just think about it: if something can sit on a supermarket shelf for months (even years) and still be considered safe to eat, there is obviously no life in it. Living things die. That food is nothing but a combination of chemicals and preservatives wrapped up in an appealing package and laced with sugar and salt to keep you going back for more.
The first key to taking responsibility for your health is to decide to start filling your plate with living foods. Eat fruits and vegetables. Eat beans and whole grains. Make sure your food choices include a lot of color—or, as it is sometimes said, eat a rainbow every day. Green, red, orange, and yellow fruits and vegetables will fill you with living energy and flood your system with the building blocks of superior health. When your diet includes large quantities of the living foods God made, you are not only staving off obesity and all its negative consequences but also proactively fortifying your cells against disease—particularly cancer.
In nutritional science circles, cancer has come to be known as a fruit and vegetable deficiency disease. “The Journal of the National Cancer Institute reported that men who ate three or more servings of cruciferous vegetables a week [such as broccoli and cabbage] had a 41 percent reduced risk of prostate cancer compared with men who ate less than one serving.”3 That is a huge percentage. When the same men added a variety of other vegetables to their diets, the risk went down even more.
If someone created a pill that slashed cancer risk by close to 50 percent, everyone in America would want to take it. The good news is that we can accomplish the same thing by being wise about what we put in our mouths. The bad news is we just don’t do it. Why? Taste? Culture? Habits? These are all weak excuses for failing to cooperate with God to maintain our health.
Speaking of pills, many people think that if they take a multivitamin, they don’t need to eat fruits and vegetables. While vitamins are an important part of a healthy lifestyle, no vitamin can duplicate the unique nutrient composition found in whole fruits and vegetables—a combination of synergistic elements (antioxidants, flavonoids, phytonutrients, etc.) that work in the body to minimize inflammation, destroy harmful cells, and boost health. Focus your energy on nutrient-rich foods, not isolated, scientifically extracted “nutrients.” Good health doesn’t come in a bottle or happen by chance; it is earned one bite at a time.
Now go and get some wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and emmer wheat, and mix them together in a storage jar. Use them to make bread for yourself. (Ezek. 4:9)
Perhaps you have heard the expression “If it’s white, don’t bite.” This quirky phrase is grounded in truth. Refined carbohydrates, such as white bread, white rice, white pastas, and most baked goods, are one of the major culprits behind America’s weight and sickness epidemic.
Not all carbohydrates are created equal. The carbohydrates found in fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains are known as complex carbohydrates and are essential building blocks of health. But the refined (read: processed) carbohydrates so prevalent today are dangerous beyond measure. They have had all the nutritional value stripped out of them. What remains is nothing but sugar—literally. When refined carbohydrates enter your body, they are converted directly into sugar, which is why they are responsible for so many obesity-related diseases.
Consider this study. Over a period of six years, scientists tracked forty-three thousand men whose diets were high in white rice, white bread, and white pasta. The participants had two and a half times the incidence of type 2 diabetes as those who ate high-fiber alternatives such as whole-grain bread and brown rice.4 Type 2 diabetes is nothing to be taken lightly. It is the seventh leading cause of death in America5—and completely preventable. In addition to causing obesity and diabetes, these nutritionally defunct foods also lead to higher incidences of heart disease and many types of cancer.6
As you begin to fill your diet with more living foods, also be intentional about cutting out refined carbohydrates. Opt instead for whole-grain products. Whole-grain varieties retain the fiber and nutrients not found in refined carbohydrates, so they interact with your body in an entirely different way. One note of caution: be wary of breads and other baked goods that are simply labeled “whole wheat.” They are often just white bread products with a little coloring added. Make sure you read the nutrition label and buy only products in which whole-grain components are first on the list of ingredients.
Limit Animal Protein
Do not mix with winebibbers, Or with gluttonous eaters of meat; For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty. (Prov. 23:20–21 NKJV)
Don’t worry. We are not going to tell you that you have to become a vegetarian. But we are going to recommend that you begin practicing some significant moderation when it comes to the amount of meat you eat. To say that the amount of animal protein we all consume is significantly higher than that of generations past is a huge understatement—and this extreme increase is directly responsible for many of the health problems we struggle with today.
A hundred years ago, meat was more of a treat than a staple. Sunday dinner was special because it was usually the only meal of the week in which meat was served. These days, however, we have come to believe that a meal isn’t complete unless it includes meat. As a result, most Americans are eating meat at least twice, if not three times, every day—and in large quantities at that.
This is problematic on a couple of levels. First of all, most forms of animal protein are high in saturated fat, and saturated fat intake is directly linked to the skyrocketing rates of heart disease and cancers we are facing in this country. Second, the more meat we fill up on, the fewer fruits, vegetables, and whole grains we are going to eat. We are trading the nutritional benefits contained in those foods for something that is not nearly as beneficial to our health. Writing about the findings of the China Project, the most comprehensive study ever done on the relationship between diet and disease, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, a leading specialist on disease prevention and reversal, noted:
The data showed huge differences in disease rates based on the amount of plant foods eaten and the availability of animal products. Researchers found that as animal foods increased in the diet . . . so did the emergence of the cancers that are common in the West. Most cancers occurred in direct proportion to the quantity of animal foods consumed. . . .
All animal products are low (or completely lacking) in the nutrients that protect us against cancer and heart attacks—fiber, antioxidants, phytochemicals, folate, Vitamin E, and plant proteins. They are rich in substances that scientific investigations have shown to be associated with cancer and heart disease incidence: saturated fat, cholesterol, and arachidonic acid.7
The amount of cholesterol and saturated fat that most of us consume from animal sources significantly outweighs the amount of healthful nutrients we consume from plant sources. This reality is leading us down paths of sickness and premature death much more quickly than any meat-loving American wants to admit. Fuhrman added:
Never forget that coronary artery disease and its end result—heart attacks, the number one killer of all American men and women—are almost 100 percent avoidable. . . . Most of the poorer countries, which invariably consume small amounts of animal products, have less than 5 percent of the adult population dying of heart attacks. . . . The major risk factors associated with heart disease—smoking, physical inactivity, eating processed food, and animal-product consumption—are avoidable. Every heart attack death is even more of a tragedy because it likely could have been prevented.8
One of the wisest steps you can take in your journey toward health and wellness is to cut back on meat. That means both red and white meat. No, you don’t have to eliminate meat altogether, but keeping the amount to less than 10 percent of your intake each week and filling that new gap with fresh vegetables, fruits, beans, and grains (not pasta and onion rings) will put you squarely on the path to incredible health.
Breaking the Addiction
These three tweaks to your diet are simple, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are easy. The way you eat today is the result of years of conditioning. There will be a learning curve while you retrain your taste buds to enjoy flavors you may not have been exposed to very much. You will probably experience a few withdrawal symptoms as you cut out refined carbohydrates and their sugary counterparts. Right now your body is addicted to those things, and the addiction has to be broken.
You can do this. The other side of the mountain is worth the effort it takes to get there. Aren’t you ready to take control of your eating habits rather than letting them control you?