It looks like all the raw milk Conservatives have been chugging may have curdled some of their brains. Some very odd wellness ideas, many of them Maga-adjacent, have been popping up in the US lately. Vaccines are evil! Testicle tanning will boost testosterone! According to health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, seed oils are unknowingly poisoning Americans! Beef tallow will make your skin glow!
The latest unorthodox theory to gain a cult-like following? Biblical eating. This is a somewhat fuzzy concept that tends to focus on eating foods mentioned in the Bible. While the idea isn’t new, it has been resurrected. A recent New York Times piece notes that it has had a “resurgence in recent months”.
“I had never really thought to look to the Bible for a recipe book,” one Christian content creator and biblio diet influencer called Kayla Bundy told the NYT. But then she had a revelation: “Sin entered into the world through food, and Satan doesn’t stop there. Food … is really like a weapon of how I can fight back.”
The good news is that you too can fight Satan for the low price of a $28 digital guide sold by Bundy. Or, for those blessed with a bigger bank account, why not sample a superfoods coaching session for around $700 a month? Annalies Xaviera, another influencer profiled by the NYT, also sells a $97 Biblical Eating Reset course.
I can’t say I personally fancy locusts on toast, but as far as fad diets go, there are worse ideas than “eating biblically”. You don’t find many ultra-processed foods in the Bible; Jesus wasn’t exactly scarfing sausage rolls and chugging energy drinks at the Last Supper, was he? Eating biblically is basically the Mediterranean diet repackaged.
Anyway, this has provided me with some valuable food for thought. Coming up with silly diets seems very lucrative. So I am honoured to be able to exclusively reveal that I am working on a recipe book called Snack Like a Strongman™. For a very reasonable price you can learn all the secrets of Donald Trump’s diet. It consists of following his strict regime of Diet Coke (up to 12 a day) and McDonald’s. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but just have faith, OK? God works in mysterious ways and so too does cholesterol.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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