Remembering Eden

It was in the cool of the day when he sat transfixed as the angel spoke to him. Alone and exiled in the island of Patmos, the apostle John saw what was to take place more than 2,000 years later. His head had throbbed a little. It was the same angel. He had gotten used to these moments of chat. "Let me see," he shrank back as he painfully wrote what had taken place in their conversation. "It was about food." He thought and chuckled softly to himself,  then looked above as though talking to the angel, "You mean these folks are really going to eat all that food? " The apostle John had not eaten for days. But after the angel showed him the food people will eat thousands of years later, he was not hungry at all.

Today's world is in the precipice of destruction because of four letters - FOOD. Healthy food eating lifestyle is not anything new. The Book of Revelation may have been written thousands of years ago but its message on healthy lifestyle is as pinpoint accurate today as it was when the apostle John wrote this some time in AD 95. Only in Revelation 14 does the apostle John speak intimately and with much detail about healthy lifestyle specifically on food. Yes the very man whom God chose to reveal His message on food has never seen and eaten potato fries ever in his life nor had he seen a machine that would print words.

In symbolisms and metaphor, the apostle John wrote that he saw an angel fly in the midst of heaven saying with a loud voice to "Fear God and give glory to Him." Fear God means give reverence to God. Give glory to God means that if one claims to be a Christian -- that is, he has Christ is in his life -- he must be willing to devote himself entirely to God in every area of his life.  That area of course includes, food. The angel gave a two-part agenda of glorifying God: the first part is, the health message of glorifying God by what we eat or drink. The second part is the deeds message that is, glorying God by whatever we do.

Chopping Your Age with Pork Chop.

If the message on healthy food eating lifestyle is as old as Adam and Eve, how did we get to eat pork chop, beef chop and lamb chop and ended being chopped up? Remembering Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, man's first sin had nothing to do with the serpent. Man's first sin had much to do with food. It bares record that man's original diet consisted of nuts, grains and fruits and berries. Until… Adam and Eve chose to disobey God when told not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Only then was their diet changed.

Because of sin, the nuts and fruits diet changed to include root vegetables. Again when man continued to sin and God slaughtered humanity with a global flood during the time of Noah, the nuts, grains and root vegetable diet changed to include a meat diet. God allowed man to eat "clean meats."

Just exactly what did God mean with "clean meats?" In God's menu, He instructed to eat flesh without either blood or fat.  The Old Testament explains that the blood of animals carry the life of the animal including its nutrients and diseases of the animal. Thus, by eating animal's blood you partake of its disease. Fat in animals solidifies inside the body and hence the hardening of arteries.

Scripture and Science corroborate that the introduction of flesh into the diet after the flood had a dramatic effect on the longevity of the life of man. Man's lifespan dropped from 800 to 900 years to 400 to 200 to 100 to 75 then very rapidly. Longevity dropped even more rapidly with smoking, drinking hard liquor, a life lived in sin causing stress, disease and despair, and a sedentary life. The apostle John hated to hit us in the face - but then in-the-face truth  is that the computer age has brought more sedentary rather than active lifestyles cutting down on the life span of man.

The apostle John didn't have much to ask the angel about how man's covetousness and indulgence on food would cause his own destruction. Health relates to a spiritual life.  An unhealthy diet creates unhealthy blood and thus poor circulation that clouds the mind and judgment. Man cannot easily discern impressions and promptings of the Holy Spirit when the mind is sluggish and clouded. And when the mind is sluggish and clouded, it is easy to make sin a lifestyle.

The Angel Cake is a Devil.

Apparently man never learns the lesson of fear, that is, fear God when it comes to disobeying his command on food. Fast forward 2012. Dr. Honorata Catibog, director of the National Center for Disease Prevention and Control of Department of Health, said that 7 out of 10 leading causes of mortality in 2002 were non-communicable diseases like heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and kidney diseases while two out of 10 leading causes of morbidity in 2002 are hypertension and diseases of the heart. Just like what the apostle John spoke of in Revelation 14. What caused the rapid decrease in the lifespan of man is not the change of serpent or the change of heart. Rather it is the change of diet.

Showing that food is getting more plentiful and energy dense, Dr. Catibog showed that while in 1955 the standard serving of potato fries was 72 grams and coke 200 ml, in 2001 the standard serving of fries is 205 grams and coke 950 ml. Man's avarice for God-defying food has aggravated over the years.

Diet related diseases are called Non-communicable diseases or lifestyle or behavior diseases. Non-communicable because much of the risk factors associated with these are related to how one lives. The four major lifestyle-related non-communicable diseases that currently dominate the list of leading causes of death in the country are cardiovascular diseases (CVD), cancers, diabetes mellitus and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD). Lifestyle-related diseases share many risk factors that are indicative of disease processes and their progression.  These risks include tobacco use, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, increased alcohol consumption, stressful lifestyle and even malnutrition.

Over and over, the Department of Health is only repeating what the apostle John wrote long ago when potato fries weren't even thought of in the cooking pots of the world. The rule on healthy food lifestyle is a four-point agenda: Eat low-fat, low-salt, high-fiber diet, and low-sugar diet. Kailangan pa bang i-memorize yan?

Studies have shown that a diet high in calories and fats increase risk of atherosclerosis leading to cardiovascular diseases. Excessive intake of salt and salty foods results to the accumulation of sodium in the body's tissues causing swelling and a rise in blood pressure.  A diet low in fiber and complex carbohydrates is known to increase the risk for cancers and diabetes.   Following the nutrition guidelines of low fat, low salt, low-sugar and high fiber in the diet will help decrease the risk of non-communicable diseases.

In 2008 a Philippine Coalition for the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases was formed to campaign aggressively for healthy lifestyle. This was matched with a bill that sought to discourage consumers from the fast food habit by requiring fast food restaurants to post prominent calorie counts. But that's just like putting government warning that cigarettes are bad for your health on cigarette ads.

If people did not believe the apostle John who wrote about healthy food lifestyles long before non-communicable diseases became an outbreak, who will believe the DOH? They now call a cake an angel only that the sugar and fat in the cake can turn the devil out of you. The apostle John chuckles softly in the cool of the day.