We glorify God in our bodies when we do what is best for our health, choose our food better, and avoid poisoning ourselves with harmful products just because they are easier to prepare.

Newsroom(06/02/2023 09:48 PM, Gaudium Press) We live in a time when many licentious practices that hurt morals become commonplace and many words are banned, precisely because they hurt such practices. And if it has always been advisable to think twice before speaking, now it is good to think at least four times, in order not to speak what can be misinterpreted and used against us.

Within this imbroglio, in addition to the much-advised practice of reading a lot to improve our vocabulary, we now also need to watch a lot of videos, almost always of dubious taste, to stay informed and to have a command of the words and expressions that can and cannot be used.

The days of bread, from the universally known Our Father prayer, taught by Christ himself, seem to be numbered, because the food that has nourished generations for millennia has become one of the great villains, along with white rice – which is the basis of the diet of Brazilians and several other peoples – being considered the “evil carbohydrates.

The statement that bread is bad for us is not at all exaggerated. It didn’t before, but now it does. And it is not its fault, bread, the sacred food that Our Lord broke and transformed into His own body, giving Himself to us in the Eucharist, being Himself the Bread that came from Heaven. The problem is what goes into the bread. And since it is basically made of water, yeast and flour, the big villain is the flour. Because of the refining process, besides losing most of its nutrients, it can be the basis of diseases ranging from obesity to depression, inflammation, imbalance of acidity in the body, and digestive problems.

But, in spite of these harmful effects, eating bread in moderation does not kill anyone. One of the great myths involving flour and, consequently, bread, is gluten, the current public enemy number one of healthy eating. However, is gluten really bad for your health? No, gluten is not bad for your health, except for people with celiac disease or intolerance to this substance, found in cereals such as wheat, barley, and rye, produced from the combination of two groups of proteins.

However, gluten has been demonized, which, in fact, can be very harmful to those who are allergic or intolerant to it, but which does not cause problems for healthy people; on the contrary, it improves the texture of food, helping in the fermentation of bread, which makes the dough rise and gives a softer texture to cakes.

The presence of the indication “contains gluten” on some products has already turned it into the demon of bread and turned the bread into a bad character possessed by this “evil spirit,” when the poor thing is just bread, our daily bread; for many, an essential food. Like everything else, the problem lies in the excess, in the lack of control, in the lack of moderation. Eggs, coffee, wine have also been culinary villains…

On the opposite side of this preciousness are those who don’t care about anything. As nutritionists say, without realizing it “we have acquired the morbid habit of opening more and peeling less”, that is, we have started to eat packaged and processed food, and to create the new diseases that destroy us every day, leading us to consume more medicine than food.

In the past, when we still had the habit of walking and could not even conceive the idea of taking the car to go to the bakery three blocks away, it was normal to pass by the houses and smell the delicious aroma of the food, and we could guess what the housewife was cooking. Today, even the term “housewife” has become pejorative and offensive and has been added to the list of expressions that should not be used. Food no longer smells far away because it comes ready-made and is loaded with artificial flavor and aroma: glutamate, benzoate, sorbate.

There is a wide range of preservatives, acidulants, emulsifiers, stabilizers, colorants, flavorings, sweeteners, antioxidants, thickeners, humectants, anti-humectants. Things that we don’t know what they are, but they confer beauty, color, texture, and flavor to what is sold to us as food, and we, who are used to opting for what is easy, practical, tasty, and causes pleasure, are putting it all in and clogging the world with an infinite amount of disposable packaging that nature takes centuries to destroy.

We are instructed by medical and nutritional specialists to read the labels on products so that we know what we are consuming. A useless exercise, not to mention that, most of the time, the letters are tiny and placed in such a hidden part of the package that we can’t even find them. If we don’t understand all that, why read it? The solution for our health is not to read labels, but to consume products that do not have labels, such as bananas, carrots, cassava, etc. But even this does not guarantee a healthy life, because we have become hostages of fertilizers and pesticides, a nice name for the poison that is used in farming and whose final destination is our body.

But why talk about food if this is a vehicle that focuses on Catholic news? Because food is directly linked to religion. First of all, we must remember that Jesus Christ, when announcing the Gospel, referred many times to food. He multiplied loaves and fishes and fed multitudes; He ate with His disciples, He ate supper in the homes of various people, He spoke about the banquet in Heaven, He made Himself into the Bread that He had already given us in the Lord’s Prayer, and then He gave it to us definitively by instituting sacramental communion.

He also said that the “evil is what comes out of the mouth, and not what goes into it,” referring to the criticism by the scribes and Pharisees that He and His disciples ate without washing their hands. “On the contrary, that which comes out of the mouth comes out of the heart, and that is what defiles a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, impurities, thefts, false witness, slanders” (Mt 15:18-19). He gave us this teaching because everything he experienced was a reason for him to make an explanation and transform it into a lesson to elevate us and prepare us for the Kingdom of Heaven.

Incredible as it may seem, there are people who cling to this passage to justify the lack of care with food and health, forgetting that our body is a sacred temple, the temple of the Holy Spirit, as taught by the Apostle St. Paul, who also said: “Because you were bought with a great price, therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor 6:20).

And we are glorifying God in our bodies when we do what is best for our health, choose our food better, and avoid poisoning ourselves with harmful products, just because they are easier to prepare.

We are glorifying God in our bodies when we don’t get carried away by fads and we don’t demonize bread, be it the literal bread or the symbolic bread that represents the food that reaches our table every day, by making the right choices within our means, trying to ensure our health through whatever is healthiest, even if it takes work to prepare.

Above all, we glorify God in our bodies when we open ourselves to receive the heavenly manna, the Holy Eucharist, which completes us and keeps us going in the right direction. The consecrated host is the sanctified food that restores our body, elevates and purifies our soul.

As for gluten, let us avoid it, if it is bad for us; as for carbohydrates, such as white flour and rice, let us use them in moderation, but let us not allow ourselves to be enslaved by diets and fads. Let us exchange, as much as possible, ready-made food full of preservatives for real food, because, besides being a necessary care for the holy temple that we are given to preserve – our body – it is also an attitude of respect and mercy towards those who don’t have even a simple piece of bread to satisfy their hunger and feed their families.

By Afonso Pessoa

Compiled by Teresa Joseph