Episode 27 Transcript
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Abbie: Welcome to your daily bread with co hosts, Abbie Stasior and Hannah Calhoun. We're here to be your weekly source of spiritual nourishment, guiding you to find food freedom in a deeper connection with Christ.
Hannah: As we explore the intersection of faith and nutrition, these bite sized episodes will help you heal your relationship with food and your body through practical advice, biblical wisdom, and heartfelt encouragement.
Abbie: And as a disclaimer, we are not pastors, but passionate registered dietitians and sisters in Christ, offering our insights to support you on this faith filled journey to a healthier, more fulfilling life. Join us by taking a seat at our table as we break bread and allow God in to break the chains of diet culture.
Hannah: All right, so today we are going to be addressing raw milk. This has come up a lot. Um, it's presented itself on social media. People have asked us questions about it. And there was a particular post that was sent to Abby and the post said a lot of things in the caption, but the main headline was God didn't mess up.
when he made milk. So this is the justification for drinking raw milk as opposed to pasteurized milk. Let's just address one thing. We're going to address a lot of things, but let's, let's address the first thing here. God did not mess up when he made anything. I'm going to say that again. God did not mess up when he made anything.
Adam and Eve chose sin. This was the fall, okay? Sin entered the world. Disease, bloodshed, and death entered the world. Diseases, harmful bacteria, pathogens, foodborne illnesses, these things came about after sin entered the world. So God did not mess up. Sin messed things up. We messed things up. So now the world is not perfect.
God created a perfect, beautiful world that now sin has tainted, right? And now there's death and illness. And there's illness because of different microorganisms, pathogens that are harmful to us. And some of those are present in milk before it's pasteurized. So pasteurization itself is a process. that heats milk at a high temperature for just enough time, which is a short amount of time, to kill the harmful microbes and bacteria without impacting the nutritional value of milk.
So it is, it's great. It's really great. It's a good thing. And you know, to each their own, right? We're not saying. You can do whatever you want. But, what we are addressing is this post that the headline was God didn't mess up when he made milk. So now we know God didn't mess up when he made anything. So, Abbie, I don't know if you want to go through some of the other things that this person said in the post, in the caption.
Abbie: Y'all, this post has been, like, haunting me and has made me so, uh, for so long. And, you know, I wonder, Is this it's a very inflammatory, very black and white type post. And I wonder if for social media purposes to get engagement, if he was being more polarizing for the sake of engagement, or if these are actually his views,
one of the other things that talks about in the post is that. It comes down to good old fashioned faith, it says. Do you have faith in God and nature to keep you healthy and safe? Or do you rely on artificial man made quote unquote science and quote unquote expert opinions?
Do you believe nature is designed to nourish and thrive? Or do you sit around, drink soy lattes, and wait for triple blind studies? You can't do both, folks. You either believe in man, or you believe in God, and we choose God every single time. Um, there is so much there. So basically what he's saying is like, you can't believe in God and science.
And like, that's just simply not true. And another part of the post was basically saying, Um, that anything that man touches, like, we should just be avoiding. But God works through man for things. ,
Hannah: God created man with the ability to learn and be independent and discover things. And because of that, we have health professionals, we have scientists, we have teachers, we have, we have all these people with all these amazing abilities.
We are not God, we are not perfect, but we can create things. We can't create the heavens and the earth because we're not God, but on a very much smaller scale, we can create things. Amen. And we have the ability to perform research studies that allow us to come to certain conclusions and to make the things on this earth safer and better to consume.
And so to say like, okay, I'm a firm believer that like science points to God and we have to use discernment when You know, there's different things like, oh, the theory of evolution and yada, yada. I believe that, like, you know, everything points back to God, to a creator. And it really just depends on the attitude and the heart posture that you're, that you're looking at it with.
Um, and it's not that you believe in man or believe in God. You know, you believe in God. God made man. But you're using
Abbie: discernment for what's going to be safe for you, knowing the advancements that have happened. And, like, raw milk puts us more at risk for different food borne illnesses, like staphylococcus, campylobacter, E.
coli. And y'all, I have contracted E. coli, not from milk, but from raw vegetables, from raw vegetables. I caught it from a tomato, like, that I washed, that I cooked, like, I did everything that I could to keep myself safe, and I still got sick. And from this vegetable. That was raw from the ground. And basically what this person is saying in their post is that like, you know, we need to be relying on nature to keep us safe and all these things.
And it's like, well, I still wasn't safe because there's sin in the world and pathogens and all these different things. And what I can tell you is that I would never wish E. coli on my worst enemy, truly. Also, we're called to love our enemies. So I obviously wouldn't wish that on them, but
Y'all know from our gut health episode, I have had a lot of gut health issues. After I contracted E. coli, it really was bad. I mean, I thought I had Crohn's disease. It was so bad for two months. And then I had subsequent symptoms. After that, for another six months, my gut has never really been the same since then.
So I would never wish that on anyone. So if we could drink something that, or have a process to be able to drink something that keeps us safer from these foodborne illnesses, and praise God that I didn't die from E. coli, that's God's grace and his mercy there. There are so many people that die from E.
coli, like there was an E. coli, um, outbreak with Chipotle several years ago. People died from that. There's been other outbreaks as well. Like what was that one? Like mad cow disease. Like there's been so many things that people have died from. So like, praise God that I didn't die from that. Um, but yeah, if we can have a process that makes things safer, like, yeah, we're going to do that, especially since it doesn't change the nutritional value of things.
And like, you're still getting the same nutrients as raw milk, but you're decreasing your risk, and this just speaks, you said before everything points back to God, this process points back to God's nature and his kindness and his mercy, because it was our fault that sin has entered the world. with Adam and Eve.
So it is our kind of wrongdoing in us with our free will, not choosing God. Um, so that brought sin into the world and how kind of God to give us a process that can kind of fix things, make it safer for us to drink milk. Um, given how, how risky it is. Like, I just think that's so kind of God to give us a process to, to fix what we messed up.
Right.
Hannah: Right, and didn't, can I just add that didn't surgeons and maybe even, um, uh, dental professionals used to, before they were new about like sterilization and things like that, didn't they used to clean their tools on like the bottom of their shoe to scrape? I'm pretty sure this was an actual thing.
Wait, what? Yes, like, so, some people, have done things because they don't know about sanitation, sterilization, and the Lord designed us intelligent, you know, we're not animals, we know that. We did not evolve from apes and and monkeys or whatever. We are human beings designed by God and God gave us Brains that are different.
We are different than the animals. And so we are able to do things Like hey, I discovered that I got sick when I had this and then you know Then you do the research and whatever and you realize oh, this is a harmful bacteria How can we eliminate this like should we just stop using hand sanitizer and washing our hands too?
Like I mean Yeah. I feel like this could
Abbie: extend so far too. And like, praise God that we have hand sanitizer, like look at COVID that has helped so many people, not even just with COVID, but also, um, with other illnesses and things like that. And the Bible even speaks to, I don't know the exact scripture, but I was talking about this with my therapist, who's a faith based counselor recently.
And, um, she even said like the Bible points to us washing hands. And like, praise God for, like, there's just science in the Bible as well. So we can't reject all science. Um, but if you're like one thing that this person in the post was talking about is like, if you're putting more trust in man in science versus turning to God, that's a problem.
And then that I agree with, because we need to be looping God and we need to be using discernment. walking in step with God. And when James 1 5 says, when we pray for wisdom, God will give us that. God wants to give us wisdom. He wants to reveal things to us, but he wants us to have the knowledge that. He wants us to have, you know, and that was the whole point in the, um, In the garden of Eden, like they had the tree of life and the tree of knowledge, and they weren't supposed to even that because we couldn't handle all of that knowledge and it's, and it's crippled us.
Basically we need to loop God into our discerning process for what is also God knows every hair in your head. He's had more thoughts about you than there are of sand.
There, he knit you together so intentionally in the womb, loved you before he created you, had your whole life. He's the author and the finisher of your faith, your life, all of these things. So God knows you so individually, He knows what you need to sewage your body. We all need different things. And I think it's very harmful to say, and a little judgmental.
It's giving pharisee to say that you have a lack of faith if you're drinking pasteurized milk because you're not trusting God's nature and God's creation. Because unfortunately, God's nature and creation has been tainted because of us and our sins. Right. So you're not better. You're not more elite.
You're, you don't have more faith by drinking raw milk. It's not how that works. And honestly, and this is why it's giving pharisee. It's very works based. Oh, if I drink raw milk, if I eat more, then I will have more faith. Then God will love me more. Y'all. Oh, if you did nothing, I was like, Oh, spirit just put this on me.
If you did. If you didn't go to church ever again, if you didn't pray one more prayer, if you didn't eat one more vegetable, if you didn't open the Bible one more time, God would not love you any more or any less than he does right now. And if for the rest of your days, you read the Bible, you didn't do anything else, but read the Bible, but spend time with your but worship.
He would not love you any more or any less. We have all of God's love already, and we are worthy, we have received that already. And our spiritual journey just reveals more and more of that love, but it doesn't mean that, um, and our ability to like receive it, but it's, we've already had it from the beginning.
So there's nothing that you can do that would make God love you more, there's things that we can do to be more righteous. Yeah. and to live more like God and look more like God, but that's not going to make God love you.
Like, we can't do things from a work based place, but it's out of our love for God that we want to take actions to serve him and his kingdom and be obedient to him. Does that make sense?
Hannah: Yes. Yes. It is not by works that we are saved and that we are loved, but because we are saved, because of his love, we want to do good works.
It doesn't earn us salvation, but because of the salvation that we have that is given to us freely by Christ, that, that we want to live a life that's pleasing to him.
Abbie: Correct. Correct. And I think a lot of people could see this post and then be like, well, if I just drink raw milk, I'm connecting more with nature.
I'm connecting more with God. You know what people need to do? Like, instead of drinking raw milk and having that be your first step, maybe you need to step outside during your lunch break. Maybe you need to go on a hike. Maybe you need to drink more water. Maybe you do need to have a salad instead of getting fast food to loop in more fiber into your diet.
Maybe have some baby carrots as a, as an afternoon snack, like maybe start there versus like thinking that you need to jump to raw milk to connect with God and honor your body through nutrition. You know what I mean? Like, I just think there's other steps that wouldn't put you at risk for a literal food borne illness.
Hannah: Yeah, there's other things we can do to connect to God and, you know, and nature. This is also very much giving, like, Mother Nature vibes, which, I don't really know, sounds a little New Age y to me, to be honest. Like, nature, do you trust nature? I trust God. Amen. Being out, being out in nature makes me feel good.
Like, recognize, like, all the wonderful things in the world that God created, and can make me feel more connected to God being in nature. Um, but yes, to Abbie's point, you will not earn brownie points in heaven by drinking raw milk. If that is what you want to do, then that is what you want to do. Uh, but this is our hot take.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of your daily bread. We hope you found inspiration and practical guidance to nourish your body and soul. Remember the journey to a healthier relationship with food and a deeper connection with Christ is ongoing and we're here to support you every step of the way.
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As we conclude today's episode, we encourage you to take what resonated with you into your quiet time with God, allow God to reveal to you any changes that you can make for his glory, trusting that you are fearfully and wonderfully made in his image. Stay tuned for our next episode where we'll continue to explore how God's word helps us heal our relationship with food in our bodies Until then may you find both physical and spiritual nourishment and may you be filled with his peace and joy.
God bless