Glutton-Free: Cultivating a Theology of Enough
Part 21: Back to the Bush
“How many of us have ever considered that food can heal? This is the biggest scientific discovery since the germ theory of disease and antibiotics: food is medicine. … Every bite you take is a powerful opportunity to create healing or infirmity. Real, whole food that comes from the earth – food that was created by God – heals, while industrial-processed food created in factories by man harms.” (Warren, Loc 413).
Michael Pollan's bestseller In Defense of Food chronicles a study by Dr. O’Dea in Australia. Ten Aborigines had moved to the city and were now overweight and suffering from type 2 diabetes, elevated triglycerides, and at risk factor for heart disease. Dr. O'Dea sent them back to the bush.
“After seven weeks in the bush, O’Dea drew blood from the Aborigines and found striking improvements in virtually every measure of their health… We have known for a century now that there is a complex of so-called Western diseases—including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and a specific set of diet-related cancers—that begin almost invariably to appear soon after a people abandons its traditional diet and way of life. What we did not know before O’Dea took her Aborigines back to the bush… was that some of the most delirious effects of the Western diet could be so quickly reversed.” (Pollan. 85-87).
Dr. O’Dea’s research is not just an isolated study.
“Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn has done significant research in this area, and has shown that when heart patients with advanced disease stop eating animal protein, and start eating a whole food plant-based diet, their endothelium’s recover, their heart disease symptoms are greatly reduced or completely disappear, and in some cases their disease actually reverses.” (Rogers, Loc 2014, emphasis his).
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