What Would Jesus Eat?

As Jesus increasingly becomes a 21st-century American evangelical Christian, after whom thousands of 21st-century American evangelicals are modeling their lives, its fitting to ask: What did Jesus eat? And how? Did he super-size it in his SUV on the way to a megachurch? The answer, based on extensive biblical and historical research, may come as a surprise to some: No, he did not.

In fact, there isn't a single mention of fast food, or even a drive-thru, anywhere in the New Testament.

It's more likely that Jesus, a peasant who lived in the Mediterranean at a time when food was scarce, often went hungry, and had to make do on locusts and crickets. Even so, the Lord ate a healthier diet than most Americans do.

Just ask Don Colbert, a Florida doctor and author of What Would Jesus Eat?: The Ultimate Program for Eating Well, Feeling Great, and Living Longer (Thomas Nelson, 2002. A pbk edition, Amazon says, releases in July). Intended for people who want to lose weight, prevent disease, eat more balanced meals, attain vibrant health, or adopt a diet designed with biblical authority, the book comes complete with recipes.

If you truly want to follow Jesus in every area of your life, Colbert said in a recent BBC News interview, you cannot ignore your eating habits. The health of Americans is going down and it is largely due to our bad food choices.

Dr. Colbert said that Jesus ate primarily natural foods in their natural stateslots of vegetables, especially beans and lentils. He would have eaten white bread, a lot of fruit, drunk a lot of water and also red wine.

Eric Eve, a New Testament scholar at Oxford University, told the BBC that bread would have been the staple of a peasants diet in Jesus day, and that most peasants achieved only bare subsistence.

Olives and grapes were harvested in Galilee, but more for trade than for peasant consumption, he said.

Jesus would not have been big on the Atkins diet. He would only eat meat on special occasions, maybe once a month, just like the parable of the prodigal son who ate fatted calf, Dr. Colbert said.

And because Jesus followed the Levitical laws, he didnt eat forbidden meats: He would not have eaten pigs and rabbits or fish that did not have scales, such as crabs and shrimp.

Though he was born in a barn, Jesus didnt eat like hed been raised in one. People in biblical times would eat for hours and take their time, Dr. Colbert said. The disciples would be lounging around and conversing while dining, not eating fast food on the go like we do.   

So could WWJE? become the next South Beach diet?

I cant imagine many modern Americans taking enthusiastically to all the features of a biblical diet, Eve told the BBC. For example, Leviticus 11:22 says, Of them you may eat: the locust according to its kind, the bald locust according to its kind, the cricket according to its kind, and the grasshopper according to its kind.   

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