Restore Your Temple

Our government, our scientists and our doctors have all been feeding us misinformation. Misinformation about what we should eat, what we SHOULD NOT eat and when and how frequent we should eat.

Why? Well, it basically boils down to pride, the love of money and foolishness.

Let me back up and tell you a story about a man named Ancel Keys. Keys was an American physiologist who “studied” the influence of diet on health. I use the term “studied” loosely, because Keys had a very narcissistic personality and he believed in himself so much, that instead of using unbiased experiments to prove his hypothesis, he used anecdotal evidence to push his agenda.

He implanted himself into the American Heart Association (AHA) and as a result, in 1961, the AHA issued the first ever advice in the history of the world regarding heart disease. They said “avoid saturated fat and cholesterol to reduce risk of heart disease”. And this has been the result:

There were many fundamental flaws with Keys studies, and you can find many well documented criticisms of his studies. But the biggest flaw was that he cherry picked the subjects of his studies so that the results would support his hypothesis. At the same time, he purposely avoided subjects that he knew would disprove his theory.

But hey, his research was great news for the processed food industry! It was very cheap for them make processed foods with ingredients like vegetable oil, canola oil and high fructose corn syrup.

Because of this, the AHA secures a multi-million dollar endowment from Procter & Gamble!!. This was the beginning of the marriage between the big food industry and medicine. This was a cataclysmic event, and no one even realized that it had happened.

Now that we have the AHA telling us that saturated fats and cholesterol is the enemy, it creates an opportunity for the big pharma industry to seize the moment and begin pushing pharmaceuticals to reduce cholesterol. Today, over 15 million Americans take statins to reduce their bad cholesterol, even though worldly respected cardiologists knew that cholesterol was not the cause of heart attacks long ago.

As an interesting side-note, Keys was also the first person to be credited with creating processed foods. He created the K-ration during WW2, which was a non-perishable, ready-to-eat meal that could fit in a soldier’s pocket as a short-duration, individual ration.

To be fair to Keys, our current obesity epidemic is not all his fault. He was just the one push the door open. Consider these sobering realities:

• In 1988, the AHA began accepting cash from the Big Food industry to put a “heart check” symbol on their processed food packaging. Products adorning this “heart check” symbol include cereals like Cocoa Puffs and Frosted Mini Wheats.
• In a desire to increase eating opportunities to make more money, the Big Food industry created a new category of food called “Snacks”. Encyclopedia.com says this about Snacks: “From ancient times, light foods or leftovers were consumed between meals. These tended to be natural, sweet foods that required little or no preparation, such as grapes, figs, or apples. In nineteenth-century America, interest in snack foods shifted from natural foods to prepared commercial foods, with a high salt and sugar content. It is these processed foods that are considered snack foods in the early twenty-first century. “
• Health Professionals begin endorsing meal replacement shakes, bars, drugs and surgery as evidence based ways to manage weight
• “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” becomes a widely known phrase which most people regard as a universal truth. The real truth is that it is not necessary to eat as soon as we wake up. Our bodies are wired to operate on a circadian clock that stimulates something called the “dawn effect“, negating the need for us to consume food in the morning.
• Once again, the Big Food industry begins to spread the myth that eating more frequently throughout the day will keep our metabolism high and prevent us from entering starvation mode.

It’s no wonder that we are in an obesity epidemic. We are being told to consume higher and higher amounts of carbohydrates, sugar and polyunsaturated oils, eat as often as we can “to stimulate metabolism” (which doesn’t happen) and being fed numerous pharmaceuticals to treat the symptoms of obesity and inflammation in our bodies.

The human species survived for more than 3 million years without experiencing an obesity epidemic. It’s only been in the last 60-70 years that obesity has become a major problem.

As Christians, this should not surprise us one bit. Satan is the father of lies and he wants to destroy us from the inside out. What better way for him to do that than to trick us into poisoning our own bodies? The very vessel that God has given us to go out and spread the Good News.

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?

1 Corinthians 6:19

Since our body is a temple of God, we must ask God for wisdom on how to serve it and protect it. If we seek discernment from Him, He will give us the ability to know the difference between truth and error.

I’m not going to give you the answer (although if you look around my blog for any length of time, you’ll clearly see how I feel God has led me to treat my body). Instead, I’m going to encourage you to seek God’s plan for your body. His plan is different for each of us. It’s not about being skinny or achieving a certain look. It’s about treating our bodies with the respect that they deserve and safeguarding our health so that we may be effective members of His kingdom.

Ultimately, losing weight and restoring our health is about releasing control over to Him. Let’s pray for complete health, mind, body and soul and seek His counsel in all things, welcoming the wisdom of the Holy Spirit our hearts.

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Blessings,
Ronni