Food and God: Eating our way back to wellness

Food is a very personal issue. We tend not to like being told what to eat or what not to eat.  We like to believe that our food choices are personal, and the benefit or damage from those choices is limited only to ourselves.  But we do not live in a vacuum. The food that is produced for our consumption comes with a very high price with far-reaching and devastating long-term consequences for all of us. But there is a flip-side according to John Robbins who writes, “Few of us are aware that the act of eating can be a powerful statement of commitment to our own well-being, and at the same time the creation of a healthier habitat. Your health, happiness, and the future of life on earth are rarely so much in your own hands as when you sit down to eat.”  So what we believe about food, and the ways in which we act upon those beliefs is both, and at the same time, highly personal and undeniably communal.  

With this understanding there are any number of ways in which we could talk about our personal food choices and the communal consequences of those choices. With one billion people starving and one billion people who are obese, worldwide, we could talk about food as an issue of social and economic disparity. As the rest of the developing world adopts the standard American diet as well as it’s correlating high rates of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and obesity, we could discuss food in terms of what the World Health Organization identifies as a world-wide health epidemic. From a political angle we could discuss how farm subsidies have outlived their original, intended purpose, and are now an integral part of as a very dysfunctional food management system.  In light of the damage being done to air, land, and water to meet the high demand for beef, chicken and pork we could look at the industrialized farming in terms of the environmental crisis that it is. Given that Americans eat more meat than any other country on earth and our compliance in the widespread inhumane treatment of animals we could rightly discuss factory farming on moral and ethical grounds. With the vast majority of our food coming to us in one form or another from genetically modified soy, corn and wheat, we could discuss the ethical as well as judicial issues regarding the loss of control we now have over our food supply.  As for the effect of agribusiness on small family farms and the near extinction of sound and sustainable farming practices, we could discuss food as an economic issue, an ethical issue, as well as a stewardship issue.  These are but a few of the ways we could discuss the way we all share in the problems of our society just by what we chose to put on our plates. Each of these is valid avenues of discussion.  But I don’t know a whole lot about any one of those areas.  It could be said that I know just enough about each one of them to be dangerous.  But I do know a bit more about spiritual matters. So here are a few thoughts about food – and the wellness a healthy reconnection to food can bring.

Truth #1:  We are meant to have dirty hands. We were meant to stay close to the earth, to work the soil, to nurture seedlings and tend our crops, and in due time to harvest what we have sown. The soil itself is a living organism home to an endless variety of microbial, botanical, insect and animal life. All human life is wholly dependent upon it for survival.  I believe that there is a connection, a spiritual connection between us and soil.  Our subjugation of others to labor in the sun and soil at great personal costs so that we might consume cheap, mass produced food without getting our own hands dirty is a witness to the distance we've traveled from mere separation to the wholesale rejection of God's holy nurture of us through the soil.  I am never as thoughtful, or prayerful, or forgiving, or open-minded, curious, or as well, as I am when covered in dirt, dirt stuck to my sweat, dirt ground into my jeans, dirt under my nails, dirt in my hair. Kneeling in the dirt of my garden I can feel the groundedness of God.  I can smell the earthiness of God.  I can see the wonders of creation and the small role I am privileged to play in it.  After winter's healing work, there is unequaled joy in seeing the first bold green leaves emerge from their refreshed brown, grainy nests, leaning skyward to be warmed by the sun.  We are co-creators with God and that requires getting our hands dirty.

Truth #2:   There is a finite amount of water on the earth.  Rain is simply recycled water, it is not new water.  The earth does not have the capacity to create water, so whatever is destroyed by pollution or waste does not get replaced. Water is not a renewable resource.  From a spiritual point of view, water is a gift from God. It figures in our biblical story repeatedly; with the grandest of Godly drama's taking place at wells and wadies, and in rivers and on riverbanks, gushing from rocks, and being parted by rod, carried in jars and mingled with wine. All life on this planet is dependent on water. Water in some parts of the world is more valuable than gold and for good reason. It is imperative that we use the water we have wisely.  It always seems that there is too much water in some places and not nearly enough in others - all depending on geography or extreme weather events - both out of our control.  But much of the water given into our care is well within human control.  Yet we waste far too much of it in the present systems of food production, mainly for livestock but also for industrial produce farms for whom water waste is simply part of the cost of doing business. Millions of gallons of water are lost through irresponsible agricultural and farming practices each day. Nobody owns water; rights to water yes, but the water itself is part of the natural world and belongs to all who inhabit this planet. We have a common claim on it, because it is the most powerful element on the planet. Where it is plentiful there is life, where it is lacking there is death.  The votes we cast with our food dollars speak louder than any organized lobby.  Cast a vote for companies who are careful with the precious water we have left.

Truth #3:  We eat too much.  Every fast food meal can be super-sized.  Serving sizes in most chain restaurants have reached grotesque proportions as they compete for what food companies refer to as stomach-share. We consumers want the most we can get for our dollar – and food is at the top of the list.  We in the U.S. spent less on our food than any other nation.  With the advent of industrialized mass production food is cheaper than ever. And we have gotten exactly what we’ve paid for. Ironically, the incidences of gout, a disease generally associated with gluttony in years past, is now commonplace.  In years past, it was only the very wealthy who could each enough high fat animal proteins to warrant such a diagnosis. But now even the very poor can easily eat various forms of highly processed, fat-laden meats and dairy products at every meal. Sadly, now only those with higher incomes can afford the nutrient dense foods that are absolutely necessary to sustain wellness in healthy human bodies:  fresh, brightly-colored, organic, non-genetically modified, minimally processed foods with no added colors, artificial flavors, additives or preservatives.  And so we eat and we eat, and we are left starving.

Truth #4: We don’t have to be sick or fat, or a victim of bad genetics, or powerless over the aging process.   The human body is one of the most amazing creations of all God’s efforts. From the moment we are born our body has but one purpose: to maintain wellness. The human body works to heal and renew itself continually and with no direction from us.  Despite the damage we do to it, knowingly and unknowingly, our bodies work at maintaining wellness without ceasing.  It’s nothing short of miraculous actually.  It’s a witness to the ongoing work of God’s created world: to think that every seven years we are literally recreated at a cellular level.  And so the question we must ask is: what foods are the most helpful to the body to help it maintain wellness and to heal itself when necessary?  What foods hamper the body’s ability to prevent illness?  Our body cannot do what God intended if we repeatedly disregard its basic need for real food that is nutrient dense, preferably in its whole form.  How ironic it seems to me that it was Hippocrates who wisely said:  “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.”

Truth #5:  We waste far too much food. A recent study concluded that 40% of all the food produced in the U.S. for human consumption ends up in landfills.  40%.  When I was a child my mother used to shame me into cleaning my plate by saying: "Just think of all those starving children in China."  I remembering thinking that I would like to say, "Well, they can have this."  Waste is not just an ecological and environmental issue but as much a spiritual issue.  According to Michael Schut, editor of the book Food and Faith, “If we are to live and eat compassionately, with care, then the most fundamental shift we must make is a spiritual one.  The essence of that shift is to live as if the Earth ‘is the Lord’s,’ not a treasure chest for human plunder. Put differently, we must remember and act as if our home is a sacred place, and that God is not only transcendent but also immanent, very near.”  To plunder and to waste tend to go hand in hand.  We only waste that which we give little consideration; cheap food from boxes and cans or what comes through the drive thru window, food from which are divorced of any relationship, food that promises much and delivers little.  But for anyone who has grown their own food, or baked their own bread, or has spent hours canning vegetables or making jam from hand-picked berries in the early morning hours – there is no thought of waste. The precious raw materials of soil, water, sunlight and time yield simple fare for people who are happy with simplicity, people such as you and I who want for nothing but to know the fullness of God through the seasonal tides of planting and harvesting; waiting and watching, fully tied to the moodiness of late frosts and dry days on end. The work of the garden is holy work that produces sacred food, and those who are enmeshed in the process of its development are deeply assured of the immanence of God.