Eat Food| Not Too Much| Mostly Plants.

http://www.michaelpollan.com

This is the book I’m reading right now.  It’s so fascinating I’m having a hard time putting it down.  It’s a sequel of sorts, to Pollan’s ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ but gives further practical advice on how to avoid the evils (and there are many) of the Western diet.

As I read In Defense of Food, I get more an more flabbergasted by the lack of public discourse about our eating habits in the West – and especially the lack of discussion about these issues in the Church. 

Sure, I can go into any grocery store and read “low-fat”, “nutrients”, “antioxidants”, and “omega-3″ on nearly any product’s face.  But what do they really mean?  And as a follower of the Way of Jesus – do I even need to care? 

My gut reaction is a resounding YES! 

The Omnivore’s Dilemma looks at the industrial, industrial organic, and beyond organic food systems in the USA.  Pollan interviews countless farmers of all different stripes and comes to a few very important conclusions about industrialized food. 

In Defense of Food is exactly that – it explains more of what/how/why we should eat.

As a Church, perhaps we focus a little too much on those blasted “tickets to heaven”, instead of the Kingdom of God.  As a Kingdom People, what should our lives look like?  I can’t help but think that our eating patterns should reflect those Kingdom principles – caring for creation, not letting food consume us, watching our environmental footprints – because inevitably, the decisions that we make here in North America impact the world we live in.  

 

The dialogue about faith should include food – and where it comes from.  I do think we should blast open the dialogue about food and start talking about some of these things – factory farms and feedlots, the overabundance of food we consume while others in the world starve, and of course, ecology.  If we want to be followers of Jesus’ way, I do think we will start to think about these things and allow the Spirit to move.