What Would Jesus Eat?: A (Very) Brief History of Diet and Morality

Having a hard time losing those last few pounds? Perhaps you're not praying hard enough. Every few years or so, "faith-based" diet books, such as Lose It For Life: A Spiritual Guide for Permanent Weight Loss by Stephen Arterburn, Weigh Down Diet by Gwen Shamblin and Faithfully Fit by Claire Cloninger, among others, get plenty of media publicity and scrutiny. These books tend to emphasize that by strengthening your relationship with God (or resisting the temptation of Satan, depending on your perspective), you can avoid unnecessary snacking and achieve the weight that God wanted you to be.

In a time when Christianity is such a polarizing topic in the United States, this may seem to non-believers as the latest example of evangelicals gone wild, forcing the square peg of religious fervor into the round hole of physical fitness. But the truth is, Christian morality and weight-loss have been associated with each other more or less uninterrupted, but certainly in different instantiations, for at least 170 years now.

In the early 19th century, a Presbyterian minister by the name of Sylvester Graham (yes, the inventor of the graham cracker) was an advocate of vegetarian diet, as well as sparse living in general. He insisted that abstaining from eating meat products, as well as consuming alcohol for medicinal purposes only, would not only curb unnecessary lust but prevent diseases. Graham had a small but very loyal following, despite the fact that he was roundly mocked by the media and the majority of the population. His popularity did not last long but he left an indelible mark on future health practitioners.

Shortly after the time of Sylvester Graham, another figure associated with our current staple foods made his splash. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, who along with his brother invented the Corn Flake cereal, worked at the Battle Creek Sanitarium which ran on Seventh-Day Adventist Church principles. They, like Graham, believed in the benefits of a vegetarian diet and exercise. And, like Graham, Kellogg was concerned with sexual vice, in particular, masturbation. He wrote a famous tract against the "pernicious habit of onanism," of which he thought that "neither the plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity." Although his religious fundamentalism eventually was replaced by his interest in the healing power of proper eating, he lived well into the 20th century to the ripe age of 91, crusading against the sin of self-gratification.

In terms of Christian diet books specifically, another Presbyterian minister, Rev, Charlie Shedd, published the best selling Pray Your Weight Away in 1957. 15 years later he published another title, The Fat is in Your Head, which sold very well--more than 110,000 copies by 1976. However, he had company on the Christian best seller list, notably Neva Coyle's Free to Be Thin, published in 1979 and, according to R. Marie Griffith, "sold more than half a million copies and spawned a virtual industry of Coyle-authored diet products, including an exercise video and an inspirational low-calorie cookbook." Since the 1970's the Christian diet industry has flourished more or less uninterrupted, with the occasional (and usually ahistorical) glance by our modern media.

Of course, there is a difference between early diet crusaders such as Graham and Kellogg and our contemporary batch of authors; namely, that Graham and Kellogg merely associated eating with moral conduct, current authors seem to view losing weight specifically as indicative of righteousness. This may be because the correlation between high calorie intake and weight gain was not made until the late 19th and early 20th century. In terms of Christian weight loss plans, even the particular attitudes and theology have subtle but distinct differences between the 1970's and today. Nevertheless, the association between moral behavior and eating or weight control has a traceable and specific history in the United States, and thus is not only a fad that will disappear any time soon. As Christian faith, beliefs about overweight and obesity, and scientific knowledge change and evolve in the United States, look for this particular aspect of our culture to change as well, and not simply fade away. For better or for worse, eating and morality seem to be inextricably linked in U.S. culture.

References:

http://www.godweb.org/weightloss.htm

http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/10/graham.htm

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=249