It has been close to ten years since I learned that liberal amounts of fat are a very important part of the human diet and that low- fat diets are a disaster. And not just any fats but it is the saturated fats that our bodies need and were designed to use. Fats like butter, lard, tallow, chicken fat, duck fat, coconut oil, and palm oil. So when I read an article called "Sacred Fat" on the Well Fed Family blog I was thrilled to finally read about what I had suspected was true-that God's prohibition in Leviticus against eating the "fat of cattle, sheep or goats" was about God commanding his people to sacrifice something very good not something very bad. I have read many commentaries on this topic and they all say kind of the same thing: fat is bad. The commentary I have at home, Believer's Bible Commentary, says this:
Besides the spiritual reason for not eating fat there is also a medical reason, as Dr. S. I. McMillen points out:
In the past few years medical science has awakened to the fact that the eating of animal fat is an important cause of arteriosclerosis. This fat forms the tiny, fatty, cholesterol tumors within the walls of the arteries, which hinder the flow of blood. Now in this decade, magazines, radio and T.V. are broadcasting the good news that we can reduce the ravages from man's greatest killer by cutting down our intake of animal fats. Happy as we are with the fact that medical science has arrived, we may be amazed to discover that our ultramodern research is about thirty-five hundred years behind the Book of books.Oh my. Fortunately this theory has been, since the last printing of this commentary in 1995, thoroughly debunked (see this article Diet-Heart Myth). God made a wonderful food for us in the form of the fat of all kinds of animals and I sincerely hope that more people will do a little of their own research (just Google "cholesterol myth") and experiment a bit with cooking the way our great-grandmothers did (try some potatoes cooked in lard!). Here is a link to the article "Sacred Fat" and I'm sure you will find it very eye-opening!
Posted by Ginny
Well, I'm embarrassed to say I never knew God told told us NOT to eat fat. But I see very clearly, with you having told me *LOL* , that it was a sacrifice he was asking of us and not a health issue as it was with some of the other things he told the people of the old testament not to eat. Thanks! I love learning new things.
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