3 They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods that God created to be received with gratitude by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 since it is sanctified by the word of God and by prayer.

1 Timothy 4:3-5

I sometimes hear words to the effect that any food is OK to eat as long as it is received with gratitude/thanksgiving. This appears to originate as a conflation of Mark 7:17-19, where Jesus “declared all foods clean”, with 1 Timothy 4:4 “received with thanksgiving”.

I would like to point out that there is a context for the latter verse, found in verse 3: “foods that God created to be received with gratitude”. No one can convince me that “foods” grown using industrial farming methods in nutrient-depleted soils, propped up by chemical fertilizers, pesticides, defoliants, and genetic engineering, and then perhaps adulterated with other ingredients produced through industrial chemical processing, are “foods that God created to be received with gratitude”. (And I will not even dignify “lab grown” foods with a remark.)

And yet that is what much if not most of the Western world consumes, mistaking it for “food”. It is also sold to all those that are willing to eat it, throughout the “developed” world. A better term for much of it is “industrial food-like substances”.

As we now return to fears of nuclear war and other horrors, let us not forget that we already did ourselves in by consuming this industrial chemical trash, and we were already on the way out because of the many diseases that it yields.

A suggestion, then: stop eating this stuff!