And Lo, The Lord Listed Healthy Foods
Published on Wednesday 23 June 2004
A Florida snack-maker has turned to the Bible for his ingredients, says Laurel Ives.
The Lord moves in mysterious ways, as Tom Ciola can testify. Ciola, a health-conscious, 59-year-old Florida businessman, was poring over his Bible when he was hit with what can only be described as divine inspiration.
In a moment of clarity, he realised that the seven foods mentioned in Deuteronomy VIII, 8 - wheat, barley, honey, figs, olive oil, grapes and pomegranates - would make a tasty and nutritional snack. And so the Bible Bar was born.
"In biblical terms, the number seven has great significance," says Ciola, president of Logia: Foods of the Bible. "So when God named seven foods, I knew it was time to pay attention. As each of these foods has fantastic health benefits, I thought they would make a great nutritional bar".
When the Bible Bar started to fly off American shelves last year, Ciola studied the scriptures for other references to food, and realised there was money to be made from Old Testament-related health products.
Following the success of the Bible Bar, he produced Back to the Garden - a meal replacement drink made up of foods supposedly found in the Garden of Eden. Then came Da’Udder Milk - an organic, fat-free milk powder - inspired by the Bible’s description of the Promised Land as "flowing with milk and honey".
Now, Ciola - who ran a health food store for thirty years and won a number of body building and weightlifting competitions in his younger days - is spreading his gospel to an even wider audiences with the American publication of a Bible-influenced diet book "Through my research, I realised there was a lot more in the Bible that dealt with health, fitness and nutrition than people realise. So I decided to write down my thoughts in book form.
The result is the catchily titled Moses Wasn’t Fat: A Bible Guide to Health and Fitness. Ciola claims to be selling more than 1,000 copies of his book each week, but insists that he isn’t motivated by financial gain.
"Moses was believed to be 120 years old, with perfect eyesight and a healthy body. He led people through the desert and was able to climb mountains. I thought to myself, "Well, he must have been in terrific shape".
As the number of obese rises steadily, and we lurch from one faddish diet to the next, Ciola believes the missing dimension in our quest for health and fitness is God. "What I say in the book is ‘Make God your personal trainer’. In so many other programmes, we tend to think we are doing it alone, but on the Moses Diet, you can access God twenty-four hours a day through prayer".
Ciola’s reading of the Bible has led to a rather muddled interpretation of who was eating what and when. According to the Moses diet, we should eat no meat, because eating animals is not referred to in the Bible until after the Fall. Ciola happily overlooks the fact that Moses and generations before him were eating mutton, quails and all the fat they could lay their hands on.
Fortunately for him, Ciola is happy to sell a Bible Bar or a copy of his Moses Diet to non-believers and those who don’t know their scriptures. "I would hope that someone who isn’t religious might read the book and find a spiritual side to themselves that would help them get their physical house in order".
The key to the Moses Diet is to resist the efforts of Satan to consume packaged, processed food, Ciola says. "Ever since Eve ate the apple, Satan hasn’t changed his modus operandi. He knows that tempting us with food is a great way to attack us".
The Moses Diet also includes the "Ten Commandments of Health". Most are easy to follow - wash properly, get a good night’s sleep, and perform a good deed for your neighbour each every day. Others, such as praying regularly, might not appeal to all of Ciola’s target dieters.
Because, as the sceptics among us know, if prayers were enough, we’d all look like Kate Moss.
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