Institute for Christian Teaching
Education Department, General Conference
of Seventh-day Adventists
BIBLICAL AND ADVENTIST VIEWS
OF A NUTRITIONIST’S WORLD
Joan Sabaté
Department of Nutrition
2nd Symposium on the Bible
and Adventist Scholarship
Juan Dolio,
I. Introduction
Although
food has always been essential to man, the actual discipline of nutrition is
relatively new. Its roots go back to the
Garden of Eden when God gave man instructions on what to eat and not to eat,
but nutrition only became a formal academic discipline in the last part of the
Nineteenth Century.
Whether
based on belief or science, certain foods have been credited with healing
powers beyond sustenance properties.
More than two thousand years ago, Hippocrates, the precursor of modern
medicine, coined the aphorism “May your food be your medicine, and may your
medicine be your food.” The play on
words by this wise Greek sage demonstrates that our daily food, more than
merely sustaining us, may contain curative properties. Although postulated throughout the course of
medical history, scientific evidence has only recently established the fact
that some nutrients in our diet are agents that cause or cure certain diseases.
It was
first demonstrated in studies with laboratory animals, and later on humans,
that the lack of certain foods or nutrients in the diet caused deficiency
diseases such as rickets, and that the inclusion of those foods cured patients with
those diseases. Although over one
billion people worldwide do not have enough foods to eat, and about one third
of the children in developing countries are malnourished, deficiency diseases
are not a problem for most of the world population. Indeed, many actually suffer from and die of
chronic diseases resulting from “overnutrition”. In recent years nutritional investigation has
concentrated on the effect diet has on the prevention and treatment of heart
disease, diabetes, cancer and obesity, since these are currently the most
frequent.
For the nutritionist who is a believer, and especially for the Adventist nutritionist, what are the unique perspectives that the Bible and Adventism have to offer? The purpose of this paper is to provide one believer’s view on the world of nutrition.
II. Biblical Views
The Bible
is rife with references to foods.
Hundreds, if not thousands of Biblical verses mention many different
foods and agricultural products. Also
widely referenced in the Bible text are the food preparation techniques and
agricultural practices of that time and place.
In a way, the Bible is a rich historical and anthropological source of
information of the populations, societies and cultures that developed a few
thousand years ago in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean. There are treatises on the subject of foods
and the Bible, primarily from the theological or anthropological
perspectives. For the believers, those
that take the Bible as the Word of God, there is the potential to attribute the
many cultural references to food preparation and consumption in the biblical
text as normative behavior. As a
nutritionist and believer, I have distilled three viewpoints from the Bible
teachings.
A.
Biblical Account of Food Recommendations
The
Bible is a source of normative food behavior.
However, most references to food in the Bible may not apply. There are few commands by God with respect to
the human diet. These are found in the
account of the creation of man, after the Fall, and after the Flood. These are three unquestionable episodes of
God’s intervention into human history in which, among other things, God gave
specific instructions with regard to food consumption.
First, God gave man a diet of fruits, nuts and grains reserving greens
for the animals. “Then God said, ‘I give
you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that
has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all
the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground – everything
that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.’ And it was so.” (Gen 1:29-30 NIV) Second, after the
Fall, God allowed man to partake of the food of the animals: the greens.
“You shall eat the herb of the field.”
(Gen
B.
Nourishment is essential for body and spirit – both are needed for man’s
well being
Food Physical Life/Health Word Spiritual Life/Health
Figure 1
The links
between food intake and physical health is a biblical insight. The Bible also makes a clear connection
between spiritual food and spiritual life and health. Food is
to soma as The Word is to psyche.
Figure 1 depicts these all pervasive Biblical links and parallelism. We
need to nourish our body as well as our spirit. “It is written ‘Man does not live on bread
alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matt 4:4 NIV). Nourishment is essential for
body and spirit – both are needed for man’s well being. As we need to take good care of our physical
being, so also we need to take good care of our spiritual well being.
The first
dietary intervention trial ever recorded in the literature is described in the
book of Daniel (
The
teachings of the Bible are first and foremost for our spiritual life. Jesus and the Bible are spiritual food for
the believer. Given the inherent
difficulty to comprehend spiritual concepts and the relative simplicity to
understand physical ones, Jesus and the Biblical authors made ample use of food
and food practices to illustrate spiritual sustenance. They also draw parallels between the well
known relationship between diet and body and the more subtle relationship
between spiritual disciplines and spiritual life. For instance “I am the bread of life” (John
Similarly, the nutritional
concepts of food choices and food quality are used by the Biblical authors to
illustrate “spiritual food” choices and quality. As nutritionists emphasize quality of food
and food choices, the Biblical authors used these concepts for the “spiritual
food.” The complaint of Paul to the Corinthians
“I gave you
milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it.” 1 Cor 3:2, clearly
illustrates this point. Paul wants us to
strive for the best quality of spiritual food.
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is
right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if
anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” Phil 4:8
(NIV)
C.
Interactions between food, spiritual food, physical and spiritual life
Figure 2
The potential interconnections
between the four elements – food, body, the Word (Jesus and the Bible) and
spiritual life are delineated in Figure 2.
The connections between food and physical life/health and between the
Word and spiritual life were explored in the previous section, and are depicted
with their arrows in figure 2. Here
follows the concept of a Biblical view of the interconnection between all four
elements:
·
Paul’s assertion that our bodies are the temple of
the Holy Spirit (1Cor
· Eating habits are coupled with spiritual discipline. Fasting (the partial or total avoidance of food for a given time) and praying (a spiritual discipline) are commonly associated and related to the spiritual life. Diet and other behaviors relate to our spiritual life “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10;31 NIV).
·
What we eat may also affect the spiritual life
of others as well. Paul’s admonition to
not offend our brothers speaks to this issue.
“It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that
will cause your brother to stumble” (Rom
III. Adventist views
Religious
thought seeks its expression in diet, and diet reflects religious thought
(Blix, 2001). Most religions have
specific norms of diet and foods, but Adventism seems to be at the forefront of
most creeds in this issue (Sabaté, 2004).
A.
Counsels on Diet and Foods
Most of the
Adventist idiosyncrasies on dietary patterns have been summarized in the book Counsels
on Diet and Foods (White, 1938). This book is a compilation of Ellen White’s
diverse writings on the subject. These
were intentionally collected in the late 1920’s for the purpose of serving as a
textbook for the students in the
The book
provides spiritual and health reasons for believers to reform
their diets. It also makes an eloquent connection
between dietary habits and physical, as well as spiritual, health. But it does not stop at generalities. Counsels on Diet and Foods contains
very specific recommendations on what to eat, how to eat, and what to
avoid. Recommendations are made on
consumption of fruits, vegetables, cereals, legumes, and nuts; to avoid meats,
condiments, heavy desserts and stimulant drinks. And going beyond foods, it even deals with
the few nutrients known at that time: fats and proteins. In a seamless treatise the book deals with
nutrients, foods, and food patterns.
Over all,
based on the teachings of this book and despite the cultural influences, a
clear message has survived in many lands and persisted through the years in
Adventism: the adoption of a simple diet based on plant foods, avoiding flesh
but including some animal products:
diary and eggs. What, in brief,
has been named a lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet.
B.
The evolving curve of nutritional paradigms approach Adventists view
Adventism
has distinctive worldviews and these views concern many disciplines. The development of each discipline has
followed different paths with respect to the pertinent Adventist
viewpoint. The paradigms of some
disciplines have evolved in ways that are utterly opposed to the Adventist
viewpoints. This appears to be the case for
some natural sciences.
On the
contrary, nutritional sciences, a discipline that started, chronologically
speaking, at the same time as Adventism, have followed a different path. Over the years, the “asymptotic curve” of
successive paradigms shifts in nutritional sciences has approached the “line”
of Adventist viewpoints on diet and foods.
(Asymptotic is a curve whose distance to a given line tends to
zero.) A review of the scientific
literature of the last fifty years clearly shows that many nutrition concepts
and ideas are coming progressively closer to the corresponding Adventist
notions (Sabaté, 2001). This convergence
is so evident in the last few years that one gets the impression that
nutritionists are “catching up” with Adventists. There may be no other instance among the
scientific disciplines where these trends are so evident.
The
following section illustrates the thoughts expressed above with one of the most
comprehensive and typical Adventist notions on the subject – vegetarian diets. This is an abridged version of my keynote
address to the Fourth International Congress on Vegetarian Nutrition (Sabaté,
2003).
B.1. The contribution of vegetarian diets to
health and disease – changing paradigms
Advances in nutrition research during
the past few decades have changed scientists’ understanding of the contribution
of vegetarian diets to human health and disease. Diets based largely on plant foods, such as
well-balanced vegetarian diets, best prevent nutrient deficiencies as well as
diet-related chronic diseases. However,
restrictive or unbalanced vegetarian diets may lead to nutritional
deficiencies, particularly in situations of high metabolic demand such as
growing children or pregnant and lactating women. If vegetarian diets are generally healthier
than diets based largely on animal products, this constitutes an important
departure from previous views on dietary recommendations to prevent disease.
Based
on different paradigms, Figure 3 depicts 3 models of the population health
risks and benefits of vegetarian and meat-based diets. Section
A shows the model prevailing through the 1960s comparing the
adequacy of vegetarian diets with meat-based diets. The basic tenet of this model was that a population
following a vegetarian diet was at higher risk for developing nutrient
deficiency diseases than a population following a meat-based diet. This early model used a unilateral approach
to the relationship between vegetarian diets and health because it only gave
attention to the health risks and not to the potential benefits.
However, during the past 20 years,
scores of nutritional epidemiologic studies have documented important and
quantifiable benefits of vegetarian and other plant-based diets, namely a
reduction of risk of many chronic degenerative diseases and total
mortality.
