Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of youf're the cure. I'm Dr. Ben Edwards. We've got a great show today, Nourished by Design, A Christ Centered Approach to Nutrition. That's a new book out by Andy Felton. Here it is on the screen. Andy reached out to me earlier this year and told me about his book and was kind enough to send me a copy. The Forward by Joel Salatan, who I love too, and man, what a great book. I was just telling, before we hit record, I was telling Andy if I was going to write a book about nutrition, pretty much that's it. That's the book right there. Andy just wrote it. So thank you, Andy. I don't need to write a book about nutrition. It's a great book. I really, really appreciate your approach here, and we'll get into the actual substance of, of the book pretty soon, but wanted to give you a chance really just to introduce yourself, Andy, and kind of tell as much of your journey up to this point why you decided to write this book.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Dr. Ben, as your podcast has been a real blessing in my life and you've had some amazing guests on. So it's fantastic resource for me and just appreciate the kind words with the book. And it, you know, means a lot because you're, you've been a doctor for a long time and, and I'm not a doctor and I'm also not a theologian or a pastor, which makes a kind of interesting combination for writing a book like this.
But I actually started off my career as a nuclear submarine officer in the Navy.
And so when I was on the submarine, I actually started experiencing some difficult anxiety symptoms and challenges there that led me to start dabbling in the just health and wellness space. Just starting to pick up some books and try and figure out how I could partner with God to, you know, just kind of manage symptoms and just discover root causes and try and tackle those things in accordance with God's design.
And fast forward a couple years to 2020, of course, the COVID pandemic.
I had a lot more time on my hands, and my wife and I had also been experiencing unexplained infertility for a couple of years. And so we were kind of deep in that process, going to medical appointments, things like that, trying to figure out what those causes were. And so just experiencing the conventional medical system firsthand with that kind of approach was a little bit eye opening.
And so I kind of took that extra time to dig in a little bit deeper into the health and wellness space and continue that journey. And of course, as many people, you kind of go down the rabbit hole and you start to read all the health and wellness book that are out there, of course, most of which are written from a Christian or a secular perspective.
And so as I'm working on strengthening my faith during this time as well, I was finding that just the, the faith piece, the Christianity piece, and a lot of what I was reading were not linking up at all. A lot of how, a lot of the secular health and nutrition books out there, how they view the body, a lot of it, a lot of times it's just material to be molded according to your desires. It's something to be biohacked. It's a project.
I didn't really, I didn't really like that approach.
And so, you know, of course there are other, other things as well. A lot of it comes from a very evolutionary perspective, which you can certainly debate that in a Christian perspective as well.
I don't think that there's necessarily no merit there, but I think just some of the roots of, you know, you look at paleo diet and things like that, some of the anthropology behind a lot of that nutrition advice doesn't exactly jive well with the Christian worldview either.
And so just seeing all this conflicting advice out there, I think there are bits and pieces of it that were great in each experts that I read, but it didn't seem to line up holistically. And I was looking for that holistic approach. And so I just decided to write it myself and dug in further and found a lot of great resources out there from a Christian perspective. But I think that this is one of those things that because I was looking for something from that perspective, I wasn't really able to find it. There aren't too many books out there that talk about this topic from that perspective. And the ones that I did find I found unfortunately to be a little bit skimpy in either the theology or in the science.
And I wanted something that was going to be rigorous in both, because I think that the, if you, if you start with a rigorous theology and you build upon that, the science is just another mode of God's revelation that we can discover and that ultimately aligns with that theology.
And that was just the, the philosophical approach plus the rigorous scientific approach was something that I really wanted to help uncover for myself. I wanted to write the book that, that I was looking for.
And ultimately I think that that's what came out of it.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's awesome. So how did you grow up from a more the diet standpoint and theologically I guess too. But were you a pretty standard American type of, you know, going into the Navy, I'm assuming out of high school or college age?
Basically your background?
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Yeah. So product of 90s and early thousands. So I was very much in the standard American diet. My parents, you know, luckily we, we ate dinner every night together. So that was fantastic.
Really good family dynamic.
But you know, as much as my parents tried, you know, they, they didn't really know any better, I think when it comes to some of the nutrition stuff. And, and you know, there was a huge influence, just cultural influence on, especially during the, the 90s on like the low fat piece. And my dad had always been told that he had high cholesterol and so he was always trying to manage that. So it was a lot of rotisserie chickens and you know, fake mashed potatoes and canned corn. Anything that would be low fat would have been the stuff that we were eating. And so I was also a picky eater, so I didn't help.
And then on the faith piece I did grow up in just going to evangelical Christian churches, Baptist non denominational churches throughout my childhood, but kind of waned a little bit in the high school and college years when I was at the Naval Academy and then into my initial Navy career.
And so that was something that I certainly think potentially contributed, contributed to some of the issues that I was having at the time and has been just, just relying on God and deepening that spiritual connection and understanding more about him. And his revelation has really helped me along with understanding more about his design when it comes to nutrition.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: Right.
So as you started looking around, you mentioned you found various things that, you know, some benefit on these more secular approaches, but putting it all together into one. So you personally started shifting your habits and you're not your nutrition and lifestyle.
Did you start to see some health improvements?
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Absolutely.
I think just understanding more about metabolic dysfunction because if you would have looked at me 10 years ago or seven, eight years ago when I was having some, some more issues, you wouldn't have noticed anything terribly different about the way I look. I was always an athlete, worked out a lot, fairly lean and in shape.
So I don't think that that was as big a piece, but I do think that just, yeah, I had, I didn't know anything about, you know, ultra processed seed oils.
I mean, I was, you know, eating those. You know, of course when a lot of people go through a health journey, they will inevitably encounter A variety of different approaches, you know, everything from keto to the, the vegan and approaches and various things like that. And so occasionally I would kind of be swayed one, one direction or another and try something there and then, you know, try something on the other side. And then I think once you've been in the space long enough and done enough of the research, you end up finding out that, you know, something more in the middle is, is really the, it's not necessarily the everything in moderation approach that I think the conventional mainstream orthodoxy would kind of suggest, but it is something more in the middle when it comes to, hey, there's nothing wrong with bread and dairy and just, you know, these things that kind of get villainized. Red meat, right?
You know, all these things that get villainized. From the conventional medical perspective, I think the biggest change for me was just really feeling confident that, that I really was doing something that was a part of God's design. And I think the confidence enables you to be more thankful for that, for that design and just for the food that you're receiving from God.
It really does help with that approach just, just to understand that, that all of this stuff is a part of his design and that if we can do it faithfully. Now there are certain versions of all of these things like bread and dairy and meat that are not particularly faithful to that wisdom, but there are versions of all those things that are, can be cornerstones of faithful approach to nutrition.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Absolutely 100%.
I want to ask you about, and I think it was early in the book I made a note of this, you said, and maybe this was growing up, no sermons on food and then prayer request list that were full of various diseases that of course we now know, totally food related and therefore preventable.
But speak to that a little bit because obviously the name of your book, Nourished by Design, just that the very title of that. There's a design to this, if we understand that design and how to steward that. You know, we use the automobile analogy all the time. You're not gonna go buy a expensive Ferrari and then put, you know, high fructose corn syrup into the gas tank. There's a stewardship component. And whether it's lack of knowledge, which I think most of the time that's it. We just have been listening to these secular educated folk, some institution that's putting out edicts of this is what you should eat and we buy that thing. We don't, I mean, I don't want to sound too harsh here, but we just blindly follow some Quote, unquote, quote wisdom. I'd say secular earthly tree of knowledge of good and evil probably would be a better description. But speak to that a little bit.
The. The no sermons on food in the church. You grew up, I think that's what you're saying. And then a list of prayer requests of all these preventable diseases and trying to reconcile that.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you hit the nail on the head with this tension, especially in American evangelical churches or American churches in general.
We have this idea of spirituality, which I think is kind of disconnected from the real physical, tangible, tangible, material world that we exist in.
We have a sort of disembodied faith is what I call it in the introduction. Because a lot of times we, you know, we understand, you know, especially from the Protestant side, doctrines like sola fide and faith alone. Right. You just have to believe in Jesus and you'll be saved. And of course, that's. I believe that's true, but I think that faith means something different than just intangible, kind of subjective inward experience.
It's something that gets lived out in the real world with a real physical body.
You know, your body has a purpose, and it's the vessel through which you express your humanity on earth.
And I think we need to recover a robust theology of the body and just a theology of material life and incorporating that in as a vital aspect of faith. Faith is not just belief per se. It's the way in which your belief overflows into your daily actions and gets practiced in the body.
And a big piece of that is how we eat.
And, you know, the tension that you see. And this is not something that's unique to my experience. I think this is a general.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: You.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Know, a generational experience that a lot of Americans have felt, especially in the church, is that we have this disembodied version of faith that if you show up to church and you read your Bible and you pray that that's what faith looks like.
And then we show up to church and we ask for people to pray for us for all sorts of preventable diseases, where if you were to just go to their house and perhaps look at their fridge and their pant, you'd see part of the culprit there, that God wants us to partner with the logic of his material creation and how he created us.
And that if we're missing that piece, I think we're missing out on a huge part of what God has revealed food to be to us. Because we're needy bodies. He created us to be needy. I think For a reason. And that's because it demonstrates daily how he satisfies our needs in mind, body and spirit. A big piece of that is with food.
You know, food is maybe the most tangible experience that we have of our daily neediness because we're eating three times a day. Most people, you know, two to three times a day, sometimes more.
And every time we eat, we should encounter an opportunity to recognize that and to practice eating in a faithful way. That actually helps to make our faith more embodied.
And so I think that's. That's the piece, that's the tension. And I know that Joel Salatin, you know, you mentioned that he wrote the fort. I know he's been on your show.
Really amazing person. And he captures a lot of this tension in the kind of the farming community as well.
You've got kind of the modern American evangelical and, you know, just all the stuff that you see in some of the church potlucks and the cookies before service and all the sweet beverages and just the way that we interact with food in that community.
And then you see on the other side, this maybe more secular community of people that would have, like, the.
The Every tree is sacred bumper sticker or something like that. And you'd be seeing them maybe interacting with food in a actually much better way according to God's design. They might be kind of crunchy in a sense, but a lot of times they've figured out what. What the food piece is, and they haven't connected that with the God piece.
And there's a tension between these two groups of people that I think Joel has really elaborated well since he's existed at the interface between those two groups. And they both see each other as hypocritical because you got the crunchy people over here saying that, you know, those people are always moralizing about, you know, the lives of the unborn and stuff like that, but they don't even care about the lives of God's creation, you know, cattle and even themselves.
And then you've got, you know, the. The other, you know, evangelical Christians that look on the other side and have the exact opposite thing. Oh, well, you know, they hug trees and stuff, but they don't care about the lives of the unborn, you know, and so there's a lot of moralizing and tension going on there. But I think that the. The right answer is to see Jesus for what he calls himself, which is the bread of life. And of course, he's also called the divine physician as well. There's a huge piece of a piece of Jesus's ministry and his identity. How he wants us to understand him is as our food and as our healer.
And that's both physical and spiritual. And you can't separate those components. And if your understanding of food and diet and health is something that doesn't point to Jesus as the ultimate manifestation of those things, then you're doing it wrong as a Christian and you're missing a huge piece of what God offers food for.
Right. That's like part of the message that he's communicating with this material stuff is it's a constant tutelage in being sanctified to understand the. The more spiritual realities through the physical realities.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So good.
Can you talk about in the book, you know, some of these.
I don't know what year this was, but our ancestors just knew what to eat basically. And then we've get some groups and institutions moving in with some ideas, some of these even faith based.
Especially appreciated your discussion on with CW Post.
Little place in my heart for Post Texas, because CW Post moved to Post Texas, established that town, wanted it to be the utopia, and had lots of thoughts about that. But you mentioned CW Post in the book in relationship to influencing some nutrition ideas and how that trickled down into the culture and impacted some nutrition advice. Can you talk about that a little bit?
[00:19:22] Speaker B: Yeah. I think some people might be tempted to believe that a theology of nutrition would be rather abstract, you just tell me what to do, type of thing. And I really wanted to develop the theology because, you know, there's a very good example of how theology really matters when it comes to these things. And the example that I use in the introduction that you're referring to has a lot to do with the Seventh Day Adventist Church. And they're of course a Protestant denomination that formed in the 1800s largely with Ellen White as kind of one of their leading, you know, prophetess, I believe, is what she considered herself to be. And that denomination takes health and wellness and food as a significant part of their beliefs and their identity, which is fantastic because I think that that really is true.
However, a big piece of their theology has to do with the idea that God's original creation Blessing in Genesis 1 in the garden, that this is the perfect diet and that we should be using essentially what you'd call, you know, a plant based or vegan diet as the Christian norm.
That's had a huge influence on the way that just nutrition advice has developed in America especially, but throughout the west, as we've exported our nutrition and our food throughout the rest of the world. The standard American diet I think was large by some of this theology, which I don't think is, is very faithful even though it is biblical. I think it's kind of a misinterpretation of that creation narrative.
And one of the ways that that manifests is through Ellen White sponsoring Harvey Kellogg, harving his, sponsoring his medical education and putting him as the steward of the Battle Creek Sanitarium where you know, there are documentaries on this and there's a whole lot out there about Harvey Kellogg. Very interesting person to say the least.
And he did a lot of experiments when it comes to food on his people. And of course he was a devout Seventh Day Adventist promoting a very bland plant based diet. Fiber was, was one of his big things and meat to him was the devil incarnate. It was the thing that would unleash all sorts of our worst tendencies as fallen people.
And so a lot of like the, the American cereal industry came out of that. Granola was something that, that he invented. And that's where I think Post comes in because Post maybe stole the recipe or something and popularized it as the, you know, the Post brand. But you get the Kellogg's brand later with Corn Flakes being their first big break. There you see the Seventh Day Adventist Church along with these, these brands kind of developing a lot of meat alternatives and animal product alternatives like nut butters and fake meats. I think one of the early fake meats that was marketed all the way through like the 90s even was an Adventist recipe. And then you start to see even the I, the understanding of nutrition as a accredited health practice or an accredited scientific field develops too under the tutelage of Kellogg.
The person who created the, and which is like the largest accreditation program and Society of Nutritionists was developed under this idea as well. And so there's this, this fantastic legacy of influence that a lot of people don't understand.
I think a lot of people aren't aware of the extent to which a theology of nutrition has actually impacted their day to day lives. And it's actually gone even to the first legislation around nutrition in the late 70s I believe with the first release of the dietary regulations. Those were actually drafted by a congressional a.
One of the senators who was behind this push, his aide was a Seventh Day Adventist and he relied quite a bit on Loma Linda University studies linking saturated fat to heart disease and things like that kind of the sodium stuff and the cholesterol piece. And a lot of this advice that we kind of look, look at now and say that maybe that was unwise, but we ended up with the food pyramid anyway and we've been living in that legacy. I mean, that I mentioned how I grew up in the 90s. I mean, that's exactly people who are trying to do the right thing when it comes to nutrition. We're looking at that kind of stuff. And that's just what infiltrated every house in America. Unless you were completely diligent about being a part of this like alternative health space, which is, should be the real health space, like the primary health space.
But you know, you kind of get labeled as a kook or something like that when you start to, to poke at some of the stuff and say, does it, does it really make sense to. Did God make fat free udders on cows? You know, there's all this, this fat stuff. Like, I'm pretty sure meat comes with fat. Is that a bad thing? Maybe, maybe we shouldn't eat meat at all. You know, so a lot of the theology, I think has really had an influence that people are completely unaware of. And I just say that not to demonize any specific denomination or to demonize any of these ideas per se, but to just show what those first principles can do, if you understand them, either rightly or wrongly.
[00:25:26] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and how would you explain the biblical and going back to Genesis or what is God's design? What, what should we be eating?
It's specifically related to plant based versus animals.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: And so I think this is where you have to have a sound biblical hermeneutic and understand the purpose of the text and what it's trying to say and how it wasn't necessarily written to us, but it was written for our benefit. And we can look back at that in the light of Christ several thousand years later to really understand that.
And so it is certainly biblical.
You know, some people really think that having a biblical diet is the best thing. And so they'll look for any diet that's in the Bible as the basis for what God's revealed nutrition plan is. And so if you look in the Bible, there are really only two diets provided and it's the original creation blessing of fruit and nuts, anything bearing seed in the garden.
And then later on there's the dietary laws in Leviticus. Right. Which we could talk about later if, if you'd like, but something I devote a lot of time to in the book. And people I think will look at those and say, well these, these are the, the times where God provides a diet to his people explicitly. And so if we go back to Genesis 1, you would, you would see the diet of the first humans, Adam and Eve being described as a plant based diet. And then even after they fall in Genesis 3, the curse, so called curse, is that food is going to be a little bit harder for them to get, but it's still going to be plant based. So they're going to have to toil now with the ground and eat from the ground.
And so then you start to see things like bread and agriculture. Right? It's not just plucking fruit from a tree or nuts. It's something that you have to cultivate. Right. And there's a, there's an important development there. I think that that has a big bearing on how we understand ourselves and our relation to the world. But for the purpose of this conversation right now, the theme is still plant based. And so people say, okay, you look at Genesis, you look at God providing this creation blessing and saying that all of his creation is good as it is in the garden.
So anything opposed to that or different than that would be bad. Right? I mean, that's the fundamental logic behind the Garden of Eden diet, I think, and it is somewhat compelling.
But I think you have to look later on at a more holistic understanding of the redemptive narrative afterwards once you get to the flood. And after the flood, God explicitly gives permission to Noah and his descendants to eat meat. Everything that moves is now your food. Right. So I think we can take God at his word that everything that moves is our food. This is what he would like us to eat at this point. And now some people would say, okay, maybe God is just providing this new diet because he's recognizing that we're fallen and we're sinful. And he's kind of making a concession. He's not endorsing meat per se. He's just making a concession for a fallen people that are, that this is just the way that they have to live for now. But it's not the best way. It's not the best diet. And so people would say, okay, I think you should, you know, even though we're allowed to eat meat, we should probably do what God designed us originally to do.
People compare this a lot to divorce. Jesus in, in the Gospel of Matthew, he has this passage where he's confronting the Pharisees and they're saying, well, they're probing him, they're essentially trying to trap him. And they're saying, well, Moses gave us divorce.
And he's saying, well, well, no, we're going to go back to the beginning to God's original creation blessing for the normative understanding of marriage.
And divorce is not a part of that. He said, moses gave you divorce because of the hardness of your hearts. But I say that in the beginning is what you should be going back to.
And so people look at that same, they apply that same logic to meat, where God eventually gives meat to people, but it's not an ideal situation.
It's not a part of his design. It's just kind of like a concession for human sin.
The problem with this logic is that I think it's not like that at all when it comes to food. Jesus never goes back to the beginning and says, this is what your diet should be like. He does for divorce. Divorce, saying that this is what marriage should be.
There's never a moment. And Jesus himself ate meat. So you would, you would look at the, the life of Jesus and, and people used to wear those WWJD bracelets, like, what would Jesus do in this moment? And if you're doing what, whatever Jesus would have done, you're, you're probably doing the Christian thing just intuitively.
And we know that Jesus ate meat. He ate fish, which is animal flesh.
He ate lamb every year on the Passover. We know at the very minimum, those are the, you know, those are the staples that he ate. And so we know that he ate meat and he ate red meat.
But I think that if you're, if you're looking to Genesis as the fundamental, basic, best, gold, gold standard diet, you're missing a huge piece of God's expanding provision.
His covenantal provision is developing over time, including meat, as a positive good for humanity. And the way that we can know that is because meat is required.
The, the institution of eating meat is actually required so that sacrifice would emerge in the law.
Sacrifice being a huge way of life for the ancient Israelites. And sacrifice ultimately gets fulfilled in Jesus.
So God starts to introduce after the Flood this sacrificial logic of dealing with him and, and this important piece in our, in our covenantal redemption. And it fulfills in Jesus.
And, and then even on top of that, Jesus says, you're going to eat my flesh?
He says very clearly and deliberately in John 6, he says, My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.
Now, that is certainly not a vegan concept, however spiritually you might take that, that is not a vegan concept at all. That's a fleshly sacrificial concept that requires the provision of meat to even make it intelligible.
And so I think that's an example of how, how we should properly understand the development of the human diet and, and that anthropological piece and understand that it's not a moral downgrade, it's actually a significant covenantal development that God introduces after the flood.
[00:33:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
So kind of jumping forward to, with that understanding, that theological perspective, what does that look like today in 2025, if you were going to counsel somebody on a biblical way to eat, nourish by design, obviously the book does that, but kind of summarize some of the key findings and maybe how you came to some of this even scientifically versus theologically.
[00:33:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, so it's going to be hard to summarize, of course, and just.
[00:33:50] Speaker A: Yeah, 30 minutes. No.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: But yeah, so fast forward. Right. We start to see some of the theological roots. We start to see in the theological piece, you start to see, you start to feel comfortable about God's provision for meat and stuff like that. But then you start to encounter the scientific piece and we're told, scientifically, at least, pseudo scientifically, that red meat and meat in general may not be as healthy as just eating plants. You know, you hear a lot of conventional longevity advice involves, you know, eat a little, mostly plants. Right. That's, that's kind of the standard advice you hear from people.
And so meat still has this connotation as being something that's maybe an indulgence, but it's not particularly healthy. And interestingly, the healthiest meats are the, the low fat meats and the high protein meats like chicken, for example, being considered healthier than red meat, such as beef.
So this is all, you know, you start to approach it from the theological point. And one of the things we skipped was the, the dietary laws. But in the dietary laws you see a positive case there for red meat, for example, because the, the land animals that were provided for the, to sustain the ancient, ancient Israelites were those that chew the cud and parted the hoof. In other words, ruminants, in other words, red meat. Right. And so this is, you know, something that's at least promoted as a positive good. It doesn't necessarily mean that non red meat is bad per se. We could talk that later, but it at least means that red meat is good. And so since red meat has been the target of a lot of the conventional health wisdom when it comes to things like cholesterol and heart disease, you start to see this research pop up with Ancel keys in the 1950s and 60s. And a lot of this research that gets culminated then into a lot of our dietary Advice and conventional wisdom.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: It.
[00:36:07] Speaker B: Would seem that God's provision is perhaps at odds with modern science. And so how do you reconcile that? And I think the big scientific piece that we've seen in the alternative health space or just in the real honest research over the last few decades has been a return to things that taste good, ultimately things that taste good. And that would be things like red meat, that would be things like dairy, that would be things like bread.
And so when it comes down to it, I think if you honestly look at the science and you honestly approach it, and that's one of the things I do, is I try and be an apologist a lot of times in this book for a delightful diet that tastes good. Because I think God revealed to us part of the culmination of the theology when it comes to food is God reveals food as something that's life giving and delightful. He wants us to be thankful for our diets, which is fitting, of course, in this season of Thanksgiving, he wants us to be thankful. And I think the key to genuine Thanksgiving is to actually delight in the food. And so if we were to go by our modern scientific paradigm, you would find that food is a battlefield, that flavor and delight exist at an opposite end of the spectrum from health.
And so you have to either sacrifice flavor to get the health and eat nothing but, you know, bland white chicken with broccoli and white rice, or you have to sacrifice your health to get the flavor. And that would be the cream and the butter and the dairy and cheese and, and red meat and stuff like that.
And so part of what I do is try and look at the theology first and then try and be an apologist for a diet that actually promotes those things.
And that would be, in a nutshell, flavorful food.
Flavor is something that communicates as a part of God's design. He. He created us so that we would like flavorful food because it communicates something nourishing to us. It's communicating that it contains nourishment.
And so I try and be an advocate for all of those things. So what does that mean in practice?
Well, I think a Christian diet, there are a lot of good diets out there. You know, there's Paleo and there's keto and there's even carnivore. And some of these things have a really genuine, genuinely good place as a, maybe a therapeutic intervention, maybe a lifestyle for some people that really get a lot of benefit from that, maybe some people who have sensitivities because of the modern array of American diseases.
But the Christian diet is the only diet that really includes things like bread, dairy, and red meat and meat in general.
It's the only one that you can find that really includes all of those things.
The key, though, I think when you're doing that is to eat all of those things in a faithful way.
What does that mean?
That means looking at the source, right? Understanding. If you're eating meat, how was that animal treated? Was that animal, to use the, the concepts that are popularized by Joel Salatin, was that animal living out its existing, Was it living what it was designed to do? Is that cow being a cow, is the pig being a pig?
If it's allowed to do those things and to live like it was designed to live, it's probably going to be nourishing for you when it's actually on your plate.
Things like, like bread. You know, in the, the 20th century, we completely destroyed the traditional understanding of what bread is and what flour is. But I know you've had Sue Becker on a few times, so I won't completely elaborate.
But this idea of refined flour, is that something that's part of God's creation blessing, is that something that's, that's biblical or that's a part of his design? Of course not. Of course not. We, you know, we know when God is telling us that we're going to be eaters of bread in, in Genesis 3 and then using bread as this, this stereotype or this embodiment of, of the, the human diet that ultimately culminates in Jesus as the bread of life.
He's not talking about something that's bad for you.
That's a ridiculous idea, Right? So you, you can't have a Christian, you know, as a Christian, you can'.
As your Lord and Savior and as your bread of life, and then say that bread is evil.
It just doesn't work. But there is a right and a wrong way to do it. And so I think understanding how we can get the bad stuff out of our diet, some of those metabolic killers, those things that are, that are really causing metabolic dysfunction, which I think is the root of all disease, and then figuring out how you can replace those with things that appeal to God's creation logic, to the Logos of creation, who is also Jesus, as, as the, the divine word that animates creation and through whom all of creation is, is made.
That's the logic that we're trying to communicate to our bodies.
And so if we get the bad stuff out, the stuff that's invented by man. I know you taught, you refer to it as man food and we replace it with the God food.
Not in a biblical legalistic way that you have to, to look at the, the Bible as a kind of a field manual for nutrition, but just looking to Jesus as, as the, the divine word and looking at science is one of those ways that helps to reveal that design to us.
I think you ultimately end up with a simple, flavorful and delightful diet that is something that will end up promoting health and it's in accordance with God's logic.
[00:42:33] Speaker A: Yeah, agreed, 100%.
So on the bread we need fresh milled, potentially even some sourdough or soaking sprouting techniques too. But fresh milled is the key. You don't want to sift out the germ in the bran that has all the nutrients and just be left with the fine white powder that's just protein and starch. And as you said, Sue Becker's been on many times. But for those who are maybe new listeners haven't heard Sue Becker. That's what sue brought to our, you know, brought that piece of knowledge in because I used to pull people off bread and now I can't even call it bread really. But that, that man food version of bread that's at the store and at restaurants versus if you grind it yourself or go to a restaurant that is doing fresh milled, that's completely different. That's apples and oranges. Different product where you can't even call the first thing bread really. It's a processed food like substance because you've pulled out all the nutrients that God designed your cells to need when it comes to bread. And same with the meat like Andy said. And Joe Salatin talks about if the cow's out grazing on pasture in fresh sunlight with fresh water and green grass and move especially regeneratively, meaning he's moving to new patches of grass every day. And that soil is so regenerated and nutrient dense. So the grass is too. That's a complete or. And you could put in pig, lamb, goat, whatever, chicken. And if they're being raised in the way that God designed, eating what they're supposed to eat. And even better, especially if they're butchered properly and humanely, where the cortisol and adrenaline hormones aren't going through the roof from stress, which changes even the flavor of that meat. So this is exactly what Andy's talking about. It's so dependent upon man, the way man is stewarding God's creation and his design. And how are we processing that food and bringing it in?
Andy, could you speak to the dairy part a little bit. You've mentioned that some. And maybe people aren't familiar with, you know, when you say dairy and butter, just going to the store and buying some dairy.
But what's the difference between that and maybe a less processed form?
[00:44:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think there's really three things that are important when it comes to dairy. And it's what kind of animal is it coming from?
What did the, what did that animal eat? And then what did we do to it once we harvested the dairy from it harvested the milk.
Those are the really the, the three key things. And so the first thing you look at is what kind of animal is it?
Well, you know, we have this animals that make the A1 beta casein protein and then we have the animals that make the A2 version of that.
I'm not, you know, super conversational on some of the history of how this developed, but my understanding is that the Holstein cow breed is the one that is widely used in America and that that's the one that creates the A1 beta casein protein. And it tends to be a little bit more inflammatory than the A2, which you would find on most other cows throughout the world and also in animals like goats and water buffalo.
So ideally you'd, you'd prefer the A2 over the A1.
So that's when it comes into, you know, what kind of animal are you getting it from?
What did the animal eat? That's another big thing. You know, you see organic milk at the store. What does that even mean?
That just means that the animal was fed a diet that did not include, you know, heavily sprayed grass and stuff, but they might still be eating hay and kind of confinement conditions and things like that. And so that might not be as good. So you have a continuum of pasture raised, regenerative, organic being the best, the best grass that, the most nutritionally dense thing that, that a cow can eat.
And then you have all the way down to just like the worst case diet for cattle, which is going to be like industrial byproducts from like the, the, the brewing industry. And I've heard silly reports of things like skittles trucks being delivered to be fed to cattle and pigs and stuff like that. I mean, you don't want that, of course, so that, you know, there's what is the cow eating and then what are we doing to it after which might be one of the most important pieces. You know, pasteurization is going to essentially just destroy just by heating that, heating up that milk. You're just Vaporizing all of the good beneficial proteins and enzymes and vitamins and mineral, not minerals, but vitamins.
So any vitamin A that you might be getting, any sort of digestive enzymes, those things are going to be destroyed and denatured in that process.
And not to mention all the beneficial bacteria that you would be receiving that was in that, that milk.
And then another piece is the homogenization where you're taking those fat globules and they're basically just taking the milk and running it through a really high pressure hose like, like the garden hose, but on like the most high pressure setting, they're just kind of blasting it through that hose so that all those milk fat globules are kind of being distributed throughout the milk so that it's maybe more convenient. You don't have to like skim the milk, the fat off the top and stuff like that.
But all those things destroy the value of that fat and it makes it more inflammatory and stuff like that. So anyway, those three things you can kind of create a continuum with conventional skim ultra pasteurized homogenized milk at the bottom of the continuum and then the A2 pasture raised raw dairy at the top. And then somewhere in the middle you might have like the A2 or A1 organic pasture raised, but maybe that pasteurized which is like a lower temper temperature of pasteurization and the non homogenized.
So you know, if you don't have access to raw milk then what I've done in the past is just going to the grocery store if you can find like a whole foods or something like that that has vat pasteurized A2 organic pasteurized milk. That's going to be a much better version than just going to the local Walmart and getting you know, the cheapest gallon of conventional milk that you can find. But that's just an example of, you know, milk is one of the most nutrient dense foods that we know of.
And you could literally there. I just finished reading Weston a Prices brilliant nutrition book from back in the 1930s when he originally published it. I mean, he had the roadmap for curing all of our common illnesses back then.
And it's a shame that we haven't followed that advice. But he relays a story about a child who his parents were calling a priest to have him baptized because they thought this, this kid was going to die. He was like on his deathbed, he was walking to the kitchen, he was so sickly that he, one of his bones in his leg just shattered.
Just absolutely deficient in everything. That, that you would need for a healthy childhood. And so he asked his parents like, what is this kid eating?
And they're like well, skim milk and white bread, that's what they could afford, that's what they had at the time in depression era.
And he said okay, I want you to start milling your own flourish, making your own bread from this flour every day and feeding that to them. And then I want you to go get some real milk and then I'm going to give you this butter too, this butter oil that has some vitamin A in it and vitamin K.
And I want you to feed that to him just a little bit every day with some cod liver oil.
And like a month later they come back and they're like, where's the kid? And we're just trying to check up on the kid. Where is he? You know, I don't see him here in his bed. And they're like, oh, he's like climbing up on the roof or something like that. So you know, it's just amazing that a diet like with, with just faithfully produced grain and faithfully produced milk and a little bit of animal product like butter, just getting those fat soluble vitamins and, and even a little bit of meat, just what that can do for a person with the nutrient density that those things have.
[00:51:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it's really incredible. And I love that book too. So many, some cool stories in there. It reminded me of the one. It was up in Canada, some explorers, two men were out exploring, trying to get across, you know, this, the Great Plain. I forget the name of the area in Canada, but they brought all the provisions, enough for two years, which was canned food, modern food.
And halfway through there the guy's eyes are just going blind and he's so painful and he can't see and they're just excruciating pain. And they come across a bear out in the wild and he thinks he's just because he can't see so he can't run. And his, I think his partner left him and he's just sitting down on a rock ready to die and get eaten by this bear basically and just excruciating pain. Won't see his kids again.
Just this awful story. And then he feels a hand on his shoulder and it turns out it was a Native American. They didn't speak the same language, but the Native American could just see that this guy's eyes were messed up and painful and red and not working.
And the Native American went to the river, built a little canal or a corral. With rocks in the stream and then went upstream and herded a bunch of fish into that little rock canal or corral, grabbed a fish, gave it to the guy and told him to eat it. But especially focus on the eyeballs, I think is how the story went. Yeah, long story short, it was a vitamin A deficiency that we now know does cause this eye disease. It's extremely painful and you go blind.
And the guy recovered, completely recovered. And he told that story to Weston Price. And there were so many other cool stories like that in that book. Book. Like you just said, simple, basic God put it all in there.
It's just we don't. Didn't recognize it. We've messed it up usually for love of money and profit and shelf life and other profit driven motives.
And I don't want to keep talking because we're running out of time, Andy, but we've got a few minutes left and there's so much more in the book. And what I loved, you know, you get into some studies on the microbiome, the gut microbes and specific diseases. You know, we haven't really touched on the fact that God food nourishes our microbes. And our microbes are so key, our gut microbes, so key not only for metabolic health, immune system health, brain health, gut health, but so this association different specific diseases and gut microbes. On page 103, you talk about insulin resistance, the HOMA score. On page 123, causes of PCOS. You did a great explanation of that on page 138, going into glycation and what that is and how that affects organs and the body in general.
Some great information on vitamin d and supplementing versus natural food sources of that you talk about LDL, even LDL greater than 300, not causing heart disease in metabolically fit people.
You go into the Minnesota coronary artery experiment, you know, that I've talked about sometimes. Ancel Keys, you mentioned earlier studies on mortality with salt. I mean, like you hit all the things iron, Morley Robbins, you know, protocol.
It's a comprehensive book. I mean, it really, really does such a great job because, you know, we're Americans, we're so intellectual and scientifically minded and we need all this proof and it satisfies that intellectual part for sure. That apologetics you were talking about, you nailed it on, you know, hit the nail on the head here with all these scientific and different disease points and the theological point too. But, you know, we've got a few minutes left. I just want to get all that in for the listener to Know that this book is very comprehensive. I highly recommend it. Nourished by Design, A Christ Centered Approach to Nutrition by Andy Felton. Forward by Joel Salatan.
I recommend everybody get a copy for their library. Teach your kids, especially you homeschoolers, it's a great book to add to your homeschool curriculum. But Andy, any final points in the last few minutes here that you wanted to maybe get across or just final thoughts?
[00:55:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I appreciate that. Run through. Because there is such a breadth of, you know, it covers everything from like the theology of the body in the first chapter to the theology of faithful stewardship in our food when it comes to like the environmental stewardship piece and just how we handle our animals. And so.
And you know, that science piece is, is quite, you know, prominent in between. But I think when you talk about all the things that you mentioned there, like I said before, it's the theology that lays the foundation that points you to Christ. As, you know, if you look at the dictionary definition of nutrition, it really has three elements. It's how the body and food interact to produce health or lack of health.
And Jesus presents himself as the redeemed body, flesh and blood in heaven at the right hand of the Father. He presents himself as the bread of life, as our food, as our true food and true drink. And he presents himself as a divine physician. And so you start with that framework, understanding who Jesus is and how the Bible reveals food to us.
And then you get to the piece of, okay, how do I construct a diet that reflects that idea, that theology?
And like you said, you got the bread piece, you got the, the dairy, you've got the meat, you've got the salt.
Just so much stuff that we could have gotten into that take all day. But things that taste good, I can't stress that enough. That's how you build a diet, is you look at God's design and you realize that it's nourishing. And you try and make sure that you're collaborating with that design as much as possible and just inching your habits ever closer to that design, knowing that you can't do it perfectly right at the beginning. And somebody who's jumping into this journey right away won't, won't. It might feel a little bit lost on, like, oh, what do I do to just start, right.
But, you know, when you take it bit by bit and start to incorporate more of those faithful practices, you know, my hope is that people will, will have the science to defend a biblical food ethic, that it won't just Seem pie in the sky either that it'll be practical, but they'll also really see the connection between that and a robust faith because that ultimately no diet saves.
It's ultimately faith that saves.
And the key piece I think though is that if you really properly understand food and nutrition, it really does help you to cultivate this embodied faith. And so I hope that people really get that, that piece out of the book as well. And I, yeah, I just appreciate all the depth that you went into and just, just highlighting some of that other stuff that's in there because yeah, we could be here for, for five more episodes but.
But yeah, I really appreciate that.
[00:58:28] Speaker A: You're welcome, Andy. I appreciate you reaching out and sharing your book with us. It's going to help a lot of people.
What's the best way for people to get the book find you, follow you, that kind of thing?
[00:58:39] Speaker B: Yeah, Amazon, just type in Nourished by Design on Amazon. I also have a website called nourishedbydesignbook.com it offers just a companion guide as well as you're reading the book or once you've finished reading the book, just to, to go through and have some of the key points highlighted just for future reference. And I also have contact information on that page as well. So yeah, I'd appreciate people, you know, giving it a read and reaching out. Let me know what comments you have. I love to engage with people on that.
[00:59:11] Speaker A: So awesome. Andy. Well, thank you so much for writing the book. Like I said, now I don't need to. I can just send people to your book. It really is that good, guys. It seriously would be exactly what I'd be writing.
And I really appreciate the part too, if it's a touchy subject, you know, with modern day so many churches, you know, unfortunately it's one of the worst places to, to go to get food, you know, the donuts, the whatever. So the fact that you're able to in love, you know, gently walk through that and cover that too was, was really important because I mean honestly I see God get blamed or maybe not blame, but like when it comes to suffering and sickness in some ways people think, well, it's just, you know, since God's in control of everything and he's allowing this or that whole conversation on suffering. But you know, as we've laid out here, lack of knowledge, this deception, lack of knowledge, so much of this suffering and sickness that we see in these prayer lists that we see, we just didn't know. And so there's a revelation coming not only in food, but all throughout in the body of Christ right now. So it's a big piece of it. So I appreciate you laying all that out for our listeners.
[01:00:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Thanks so much. And thanks again for your faithful work all these years. And just the. This podcast is just so valuable, so I appreciate it.
[01:00:38] Speaker A: Thank you, Andy. All right, Andy Felton, everybody. Nourished by design, book.com the website just. Or go to Amazon, get the book. I highly recommend it, Andy. Thank you so much. And everybody will be back next week with another Great Show. I'm Dr. Ben Edwards. You're the Cure.
