Is Healthy Eating About Diets?

It seems that often when someone talks about healthy eating, they are talking about losing weight. With the rise of obesity in our country, weight loss can be a valid component of health.

Obesity is certainly a sign of bad health. Cardiologists and doctors and health publications are always giving us warnings about this. However, the flip side is not true. Being thin is not always a sign of good health. Thin people have heart attacks, cancer and other health problems. There has to be more to it than a number on the scale!

Even in my short life, I've lived through a lot of diet crazes. There was the low fat diet all the girls were on in high school. No one stopped to think what was actually wrong with fat. We just thought that fat made us fat. So, we ate our preservative-laden fat free cookies and our sugar-filled candy and our nitrate-filled lean turkey lunch meat and thought we were doing great! We may have even lost a few pounds.

Then the low carb diets came along. Again, no one stopped to think what was actually wrong with carbs. We just were told that carbs were bad and now we could eat all that fat we had avoided. It sounded good because all of us were tired of fat free yogurt and turkey sandwiches without the cheese. So we piled our plates with bacon and eggs and left off the fruits and most vegetables. If we had vegetables on a salad, we doused them with full-fat, Ranch dressing, thankful to put away our low-fat Italian with the weird aftertaste.

Then there was the sugar-free diet. I'm all about cutting out sugar since it's not really a food created by God. I just wonder why all the sugar-free foods still taste so sweet. If that's not sugar in there, what is it? Most likely one (or more) of the artificial sweeteners that some of us equate with vegetables as a staple in a healthy diet.

However, when I talk about real food and share my menus and encourage you to grow toward better choices; I do it just because I love food in it's God-given form and want you and your family to enjoy the good taste and health it brings.

God gave food laws to His people, but He never mentioned their size. He didn't have a scale in the temple for them to weigh in to see how well they were doing with their eating. In fact, He talked about fat as a good thing and bread as the staff of life. He didn't take sweetness out of their life, but brought them to a land flowing with milk and honey.

We really don't know how much most of the Israelites weighed, but we do know their God-given diet kept them from the diseases the Egyptians suffered. So, they must have avoided obesity while eating fat, bread, milk and honey. Now that's some food for thought!