If we live in a way that impairs our health, we deprive God of service we owe Him. God will accept us when we are old and sick, but the fact remains that we will have deprived God and humanity of our best years of service.

There are but few as yet who are aroused sufficiently to understand how much their habits of diet have to do with their health, their characters, their usefulness in this world, and their eternal destiny (Councils on Diet and Foods, 51).

It is a well known health principle that breakfast should most nearly constitute the heartiest meal of the day. Lunch should follow at least five hours later, so as to give the stomach a proper period of work and rest.

What’s for lunch?

If you were following the SAD (Standard American Diet), you might have a cheeseburger, fries, milkshake, and an apple fritter. This food fare is loaded with fat, linking to many life-threatening diseases. Some of these major diseases include heart disease, strokes, cancers of the colon, breast, and prostrate, and type 2 adult-onset diabetes.

A good alternative lunch might be a hearty vegetarian soup, whole-wheat pitas stuffed with avocado, lettuce, sprouts, cucumbers, tomatoes, or fresh fruit such as papaya, pear or mango.

This lunch would be devoid of cholesterol and animal fats, not to mention excess salt and sugar. No empty calories! In addition, it would be high in fiber, as well as phytochemicals and antioxidants which lower the risk of cancer.

The Original Health Plan

A little common sense tells us that we need to reduce and even eliminate the unhealthy fats in our diets. Excess fat in foods is probably the most damaging component of the SAD.

Cholesterol is found only in animal products. A plant-based diet contains absolutely no cholesterol! It is interesting to note that, while God did allow humankind to eat "clean" flesh foods for a short time after the flood, He strictly forbade the use of eating the animal fat and the blood in these foods. God said, “It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood” (Leviticus 3:17). “Moreover, ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast, in any of your dwellings” (Leviticus 7:26).

God is trying to lead us back, step by step, to His original diet of subsisting on the natural products of the earth. Fruits, grains, nuts, and vegetables should compose our eating fare. All the elements of nutrition are contained in these foods. How much better to get all of them firsthand, rather than secondhand and loaded with fat and cholesterol.

The purpose of teaching, learning, and living health principles is to secure the highest development of body, mind, and soul. The laws of nature, being the laws of God, are designed for our good and obedience to them promotes happiness in this life and helps in the preparation for the life to come.

What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).