Lately I've noticed that a lot of Christians are obsessing on what is called 'The Daniel Diet', supposedly based on the diet adopted by Daniel in the Bible. He and other young Hebrew captives (remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?) chose to shun the King's wine and food when they were captives in Babylon.
I had always understood this choice on Daniel's part to be based on the desire to eat according to the Levitical laws regarding food, but the proponents of the diet would have us believe that Daniel and his companions wanted to show the benefits of 'a natural diet', versus the diet eaten by the King and his court.
In Daniel, chapter 1, Daniel himself takes on a challenge to show the value of a natural diet (v12) and goes on to prove its success (v15). His regime is the basis for Daniel’s Diet.''
You can read Daniel Chapter 1 here and see if there is any mention of such motives on Daniel's part.
Personally I think someone is 'adding to' God's word here; Daniel was not prescribing his diet as a universal practice. He was, seemingly, attempting to show that God could keep him and his compatriots healthy even on a limited, meager diet.
It seems Christians are not immune from the food faddism and diet obsessions that so plague many Americans. It seems every other person I meet these days is on some sort of self-chosen dietary regime, according to the fads of the moment. Low carb, high protein, gluten-free, 'natural' or 'raw, whole foods', vegetarianism, veganism, and on and on.
Few Americans seem to be able to eat a meal and enjoy it without counting carbs, trans-fats, protein grams, fiber content, calories, gluten, food additives, antioxidants, probiotics. Few Americans, it seems, are willing to let their fellow Americans eat what they please without offering recommendations of their own chosen food regime or diet, which they always see as THE only way to health and attractiveness.
This tendency to obsess about food and health is something that is not new.
''About a hundred years ago John Harvey Kellogg persuaded a great number of fluent and well educated Americans to sign themselves into his sanitarium at battle Creek, Michigan. Here they submitted to a regime that included all-grape diets and almost hourly Bulgarian yogurt enemas and of course whole grains. At this same time millions of Americans became convinced that "Fletcherizing" was the cure to their ailments. Horace Fletcher, known as the Great Masticator, preached the importance of chewing each bite of food 100 times.''
The writer offers his opinions of why this food faddism is so prevalent in America:
''These proponents of healthy eating marked the beginning of an era of food faddism that has not ended. Why are Americans so vulnerable to these fads? I think it has to do with the diversity of cultures that exists in the US. We do not have a stable national cuisine as do other cultures. Other cultures have found over hundreds and even thousands of years what is a healthy diet for their area. Since we have no dietary traditions to follow we are more easily subject to the latest "scientific" approach to eating.''
Studies have tried to examine the kinds of people prone to food faddism and the use of 'fad food products' including supplements, vitamins, 'health foods', etc., and have not found consistent patterns.
''One possible hypothesis concerning fad food use is that it is in some way associated with a middle-American value system which embraces such beliefs as the need for preventive maintenance and the utility of technological innovation to solve potential problems such as aging or future illness.''
It does seem many Americans, compared with those in other countries, are especially preoccupied with youth and the fear of aging, and fitness, as well as outward physical attractiveness. Much of the food faddishness revolves around avoiding illness and maintaining youth. Not a few of the food-obsessed people I know were people who despite their finicky eating habits were not particularly healthy and hearty.
Another aspect of this obsession with food, health, and youth, is the vegetarian 'lifestyle.' It does seem that vegetarianism is more common now than it was when I was a vegetarian in the 1980s, and the so-called 'vegan' diet is certainly more common, especially among younger people.
In some surveys, Americans displayed a more fearful attitude about food than their French counterparts:
According to Rozin, the U.S. medical establishment’s preoccupation with what foods constitute a healthy diet also has added to American women’s “normative discontent” about weight and body image. He cites his recent survey of college students from six campuses across the U.S. In that study, more than 10 percent of the female respondents admitted that they are “embarrassed” to be seen buying a chocolate bar, while 30 percent said they would be willing to take a nutrition pill—and forgo eating. “About one quarter of Americans, mostly women,” Rozin adds, “if asked for the first few words that come to mind when they think of chocolate, mention both a positive and a negative word: ‘delicious’ and ‘fat.’ They’ve taken this incredibly delicious food, and they’ve made it into something like a toxin.”
I've often commented on how just about the only thing that is called 'decadent' or 'sinful' these days is food, specifically the tasty foods like chocolate.
Ámericans in the survey seemed to connect certain foods with the idea of 'poison' and to connect health with food more than they connect pleasure with food.
'“We tend to think about what’s in the food that’s either good or bad for us,” explains Rozin, “and the French think about it as an experience: It’s eating. They’re thinking about it in the mouth, and we’re thinking about it in the bloodstream. Ironically, recent studies show that life expectancy is about the same in France and the U.S. The French eat a higher-fat diet, have higher levels of blood cholesterol, and do not worry about a healthy diet, yet still have a rate of cardiovascular disease that is about one-third less than Americans.''This is the mindset that creates the food fads; the search for the perfect diet which will insulate us from illness or obesity or aging. There is also the fact that foods are often viewed as indicators of social status; 'unhealthy' foods are often associated with lower-class people while the healthy 'whole' foods are associated with the wealthy and trendy people. Remember the president's remarks a few years ago about the 'price of arugula'? Arugula is one of those status-conferring kinds of foods.
Recently there has been a discussion of vegetarianism on several blogs, beginning and continuing at OneSTDV and carrying over to Inductivist, among others. It was an interesting series of posts, bringing even the Jewish Question into the mix.
From OneSTDV:
A non-exhaustive list of meat currently stigmatized by the nutritional establishment reads like a traditional white Christian dinner: pork, ham, bacon, lard, and gelatin. Butter and oil, staples of down-home Southern cooking, are out too. And ever hear Dean Ornish or Andrew Weil encourage people to start eating hunting game like deer, rabbit, bird, and wild boars?''
This would be consistent with what I've said about the class bias in food attitudes, as well as an ethnic/regional element; I also alluded to the latter in my post a few weeks ago about Paula Deen and her nutritionally incorrect Southern cooking. It has all the forbidden elements.
Another element in the food faddism in our country is that we are spoiled for choice. We are presented with a staggering array of foods to eat, often many brands of the same foods, all competing in their claims to being a 'healthier' choice or, subliminally, appealing to our desire for prestige or status.
We have so much abundance that we can afford to be finicky and fussy about what we eat, and to make a fetish of denying ourselves good things, perhaps as a mark of our superior character. Few believe in old-fashioned morality these days, even Christians, but most people like to show their morality by eating the 'right' foods.
Now is the cue for someone to claim that we can blame this all on the Puritans, who somehow passed on to most Americans their tendency to prudery. The difference is that we've made food a kind of moral test. One has to eat the 'right' foods, and having backslidden, to make atonement by a rigorous exercise program. We Americans are not prudes in the old sense, but food prudery is everywhere.
