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EAWhat does the book of Daniel have to say about a plant-based diet? That it takes a miracle of God to stay healthy on a plant-based diet.
The Daniel fast is pretty popular in Christian circles. The idea is to avoid meat and other “fine” or “rich” foods like Daniel and his friends did for some period of time. There’s even a website that lays out all the suggested foods to avoid. Now most of the food people are giving up on a Daniel fast are going to be good things to avoid things like sugar and processed oils, and because of this some people will even experience health benefits short term.
In this story, it’s assumed that their diet is not nutritionally adequate, but Daniel and his friends had a good reason to test God in protecting them despite it. I’m just not so sure that we have a good reason to do that today. If we read this story and our takeaway is that eating a diet of vegetables is a good idea then I think we are missing God’s faithfulness and sovereignty in the story.
There were three times in the book of Daniel when Daniel and his friends were protected when naturally they should not have been: when Daniel was thrown into the Lions den, and with Daniel and his friends were thrown into the fiery furnace, and when Daniel and his friends eat a diet of nothing but vegetables. Each time it was a testament to the pagan nation around them that their God was real and faithful.
Fasting is mentioned so many times in the Old Testament and the New Testament and there are so many good spiritual reasons and even health benefits that can come from it. How neat is it that even when God commands us to abstain from all food He can even be using that for our health? But every time the Bible talks about fasting the implication seems to be avoiding food completely for some short period of time, and it turns out that that is the type of fasting that is usually going to have the most health benefits anyway. So my recommendation is to fast by just abstaining from all food.
#fasting #danielfast #biblicalnutrition #eatmeat #ancestral #ancestraleating #ancestralfood #fast
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