Learning Along the Way

For the last transfer (six-week period between arrival of new missionaries and general reshuffling of missionary assignments), my message to the missionaries as we visited their apartments was on the Word of Wisdom. This is a revelation given to Joseph Smith regarding health. (To read the scripture, go here.) Spending six weeks teaching and studying this revelation caused us to ponder more about how we were living it. Most members of the church focus on the "don'ts" of the Word of Wisdom: Don't use tobacco, coffee, tea, alcohol or drugs. These are, obviously, very important for physical, spiritual and mental health.  However, fully half of the Word of Wisdom gives us things we should do. We are to eat meat sparingly, and eat every grain, and fruits and vegetables with prudence and thanksgiving. This is a great response to the Paleo trend that I just couldn't feel good about. The biggest discussion I'm aware of, with members of the church, is the meaning of sparingly. We have long felt that it meant less than we were eating, but we didn't feel it strongly enough to do anything about it. Then, again while teaching about this principle, I came across a post on Meridian Magazine about fully living the Word of Wisdom.  I read the post, by Jane Birch, who works as the Assistant Director of the Brigham Young University Faculty Center. It linked to other posts by her, and to a book she has written, called Discovering the Word of Wisdom. We ordered and read the book, and then went on to other things she recommended, including The China Study by T. Colin Campbell (amazon), Forks Over Knives (a documentary available on Netflix), and the website of Dr. John A. McDougall, MD, (drmcdougall.com)

After much reading and pondering, we decided that we would seriously cut back our use of meat, and try to follow a Whole Foods Plant-Based diet. We do not want to label ourselves as vegetarian or vegan, or, indeed, anything at all but disciples who are trying to follow the diet the Lord prescribed, as well a secure the best health we can for the remainder of our lives.

We began this on October 1. We are not willing to throw lots of things away, so we continue to eat what we had on hand, though spaced much further apart. We won't be able to tell much in the way of blood work, etc., while here, so we'll have to go purely on feelings until we get home. The only thing I can say, so far, is that I haven't had any Tums since starting eating this way, and I was chugging them down pretty regularly just days before.

We would like to invite each of you to read the resources we did, and draw your own conclusions. We'd love to hear what you think (after you've done the reading/watching!)