Not Mad about Nutrition: But fighting hard not to lead another crazy neighbor astray

 

 

I'm not a food alarmist.

I'm not one of those folk who goes around snatching food out of anyone's hands like retired NBA player Dikembe Mutombo blocking food purchases in a Geico commercial.

Although I never willingly choose to eat anything prepared with coconut oil*, and although I'll never agree with laxatives, I'm not one who goes around saying never eat this food, and don't ever eat that food. There's an occasion for everything that has Heaven's blessing.

Yet I may object when lives are on the line, and when we're about to spend a crazy amount of money only to do something unhealthy. Setting a good example is important to me, and to most other folk who are Christian.

But many folk never give a second thought to whether a food purchase is joyful, a blessing, or whether it will make sense to an onlooking, covetous, or confused neighbor. I, for one, am more special than not to give food a second thought.

I try to model food ways that most people can manage to follow. I try not to have food habits that are too expensive — or too unhealthy — for most other people to have as habits. That's the season Heaven has had me live for a long time (1 Corinthians 10:31-32).

I think that, from a Christian perspective, we're living during a very difficult time (Matthew 23:15), when many are easy to be conflicted, and sometimes enraged, by even our personal choices.

But food should be an easy matter to manage or to deal with. Although we may think carefully about it sometimes, our meals were never meant to torment us.

... After all: We've lived this far, by faith.

 

 

 

A school lunch during the Great Depression, in 1936, gives a fair idea how some of our elders not only survived, but thrived. 

Public-domain photo: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum

 

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* Cooking with coconut oil is a fairly new trend on the global stage. But it's not a good trend. In fact, when I was a child, adults in the know, cautioned against eating very much candy made with coconut oil. I think news reports, at that time, may have been reacting to a study that may have found a popular candy prepared with coconut oil was raising bad cholesterol pretty significantly.

When we fast-forward more than 40 years to today, there's a push to accept global trends without regard for anyone's health. And maybe people who push that way, just don't recognize that, no matter where anyone is in our world, there is always some foodway that isn't exactly good for us; and coconut oil is one of those vices. Coconut oil is more saturated with fats that hurt us, than any other cooking oil, including shortening and beef fat.

Coconut oil does have some redeeming uses, however.

Plain, 100 percent coconut oil from the baking aisle at the grocery store, is very good for healing cracked skin on feet, and it conditions and protects our African-American hair beautifully, without unwanted fragrances and oiliness.

Amen.