How God Makes Food
Despite a world full of conflicting and confusing dietary advice, the matter of what to eat is really very simple. God gave us plant foods and He gave us animal foods. The food He gave us is the food we are meant to eat. The Creator of our bodies made the perfect food for our bodies and He tells us exactly what that is. God is our Master Nutritionist and His Word is our dietary compass.
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
Genesis 1:29
Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.
Genesis 9:3
Humans are heterotrophs which means that we are made to eat other living organisms (plants and animals) for energy and nutrients. Animals are heterotrophs too; they must eat other living things to stay alive. Some eat plants (herbivores), some eat animals (carnivores) and some eat both (omnivores). Humans are omnivores; we eat both plants and animals.
Plants, on the other hand, are autotrophs which means they produce their own food. They don’t need to eat other living organisms. They are producers, not predators, which puts them at the bottom of the food chain. They are the base of all human and animal nutrition. All food starts with plant life. Humans eat plants. Animals eat plants. Even animals that eat other animals (carnivores) eat animals that have eaten plants. When we eat a steak, we are eating food from an animal that has relied solely on eating plants!
Plants work in sync with other parts of Creation in order to produce food and become food. They use carbon, oxygen and hydrogen - the three primary elements of life that come from air and water - plus the power of the sun to make food. We know this process as photosynthesis. This is the stuff we thought was so boring to learn in middle school science class but that is fascinating to understand in the context of nutrition. We are made of the elements of Creation!
Plants use the sun’s energy to transform carbon from carbon dioxide in the air into chains of carbon bonds and store them as chemical energy in the plant. These carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen (hydrocarbon) chains of energy are what we know as CARBOHYDRATES and FATS.
Carbohydrates and fats are what our bodies use as fuel. This is what our mitochondria burn to make ATP and give our bodies energy!
Plants are a vehicle for turning the sun’s energy into chemical energy into food energy. The sun directly energizes our body through the light we absorb but it also energizes our body through the food that we eat. Essentially we are “eating sunlight” when we get nutrition through plants, and animals that have eaten plants.
Plants also make PROTEIN by absorbing nitrogen from soil. They use the nitrogen to build amino acids which create the protein in their structure. Amino acids are what become the building blocks of our bodies. When animals eat plants, they become a concentrated source of these amino acids which are passed onto us when we eat animals.
Nitrogen is also a critical component in the photosynthesis process as it is needed to make chlorophyll in plants. Chlorophyll is what gives leaves their green color and is the chemical that allows plants to absorb sunlight. Nitrogen is an important key in making all of our food.
The minerals that plants draw up and store from the soil are also an essential key to our health. They are passed onto us when we eat plant and animal foods.
When it comes down to it, our bodies are made of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and minerals. God made us from the earth and we are nourished by the earth. HIs design is perfect and the closer we honor the way our bodies are meant to work in sync with Creation, the healthier we will be.
This is Real Food, the way God made it.