154. Relish Your Food
Today’s reading: “The Ministry of Healing” pp. 300b–301c.
The principles of great eating:
- Use high-quality ingredients. Take the time to choose carefully.
- Prepare the meal with skill and intelligence (and love?)
- Relish the meal
If the food eaten is not relished, the body will not be so well nourished.
That is a pretty amazing statement! So if I just gobble food down, instead of enjoying it, do I really miss out on nutrients? While I couldn’t find any direct evidence of this (foodies, nutritionists and dietitians out there, do you know of anything supporting this statement?), my search took me down some very interesting paths:
If people are told that the food is good for them they are more likely to eat it.
Enjoyment of food is associated with better health.
Guilt, worry and concern about food (in this case, chocolate cake) are counterproductive and are associated with poorer self-control and less motivation, resulting in poorer health. A better way is to see chocolate cake (or whatever your guilty pleasure is) as a “celebration”. Save it only for that “special occasion”, look forward to it, plan for it and then on the big day, eat it with relish and thankfulness.
Some practical implications of this are to, fill the craving, focus on how it makes you feel and enjoy, enjoy enjoy. It seems we are wired to enjoy unhealthy food more, but the unhealthy effects can be mitigated.
Then something out of the blue (for me); enjoyment for kids and how “and with love” should be added to the statement:
The food should be carefully chosen and prepared with intelligence and skill.
There are so many ideas that come from the French school lunches:
It seems to work with a 3 year-old, but doesn’t always come home
and there is an exercise component
but maybe the regime is too rigid.
This taught me that I need to intentionally enjoy my food and be more careful about how I eat it.
But the really big idea from all of this is that while I love the idea of the Jeremy Dixon’s Revive Cafe, I wonder how we could get more elegant.
I have already booked into the Church Planting conference next year, with the idea of planting a church on the principles of Ministry of Healing but now I want to see how feasible it would be to plant a church with an upmarket restaurant.
You could never accuse of Ellen of short-changing us on information, the rest of today’s reading covered the:
Rules for Breadmaking
- Use whole-grain flour, not fine, white flour which causes constipation etc.
- Don’t use soda or baking powder in bread, it is less palatable and inflammatory.
- Use water, not milk
- Make small loaves, the yeast is more likely to be killed by the baking
- Bread should be light and sweet. No sourness
- Just-out-of-the oven? Only eat fresh bread that is unleavened. New yeast bread is difficult to digest.
- Zwieback (Ger. twice baked) is one of the most palatable and easily digested breads.
- Porridge should be cooked for several hours and is less wholesome than bread, because it isn’t chewed as well.
