Claude Wilson, Outlook Writer

Menu varied significantly with location and availability, but the typical Bible diet consisted mostly of fruits, vegetables, wild and cultivated grain and seeds, fish, raw, unpasteurised dairy products, and meat from wild and domesticated animals.

The diet of the Bible supplied what science centuries later classified as proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and micronutrients, which met the nutritional requirements of the marvellously engineered human being, and men and women enjoyed comparatively longer and apparently, healthier lives.

Bible Proteins

Bible proteins came from a combination of plants and animal sources that met human body's requirements of 22 amino acids, including all eight essential ones. Seeds, legumes, and cereal grains and other sources like meat, fish and dairy products provided protein the diet.

"Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I give you green plants," Creator told Noah in Gen 9:3. He had previously classified animals into clean and unclean and later categorised meat into clean, to be eaten, and unclean, to be avoided (Lev.11).

"Do you have anything to eat?" Jesus asked. They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence, (Luke 24). The fish (with fins and scales) shall you eat, Deuteronomy 14:9 says.

DAIRY PRODUCTS

The good book is clear that milk from certain animals is a viable food acceptable for human consumption. "The biggest problem with dairy products comes from our habit of 'tinkering' with dairy animals and their milk products to 'make them better'," says Dr. Jordan Rubin in the Maker's Diet.

"In that day, a man will keep alive a young cow and two goats. And because of the abundance of milk they give he will have curds to eat," says Isaiah 7:21-22. Curd is the fermented milk we today called yogurt.

"Honey and curds, sheep (lamb), and cheese from cow's milk for David and his people to eat," (2 Samuel 17:29).

"Properly prepared (germinated or fermented) seeds, legumes, and cereal grains represent the best sources of protein in the vegetable kingdom, but they, along with all other plant foods, are low in tryptophan, cystine and threonine," Dr. Rubin wrote.

"Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt, put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread," (Ezek 4:9.)

Wheat and barley were the most important grains in Bible times. The former, since ancient times, has supplied humans with a valuable item of diet and insight on the Scriptures says it was sold at a price double or triple that of the latter, which was often grounded into flour and made into bread, often in the form of a cake. Spelt is an inferior type of wheat and millet is similar to sorghum.

Bible carbohydrates

Carbohydrates include natural sugars that come directly from nature without refinement or enrichment. It comes also from table sugar (sucrose), milk sugar (lactose) and maltose, from fruits, vegetables, nuts seeds and dairy products in the more easily digested form.

Read more about the Bible's diet next week.