160. What Is Real Food? Exposing the Food Deception and Returning to God’s Design

What if the “healthy” choices we’ve been sold are quietly making us sick? We pull back the curtain on the food deception—how modern diets drifted from God’s design and why so many of us feel inflamed, foggy, and dependent on quick fixes. With a clear, Scripture-rooted lens, we define real food as God made it, unpack the meat debate without the culture-war noise, and examine how our plates changed over the past 200, 100, and 50 years as factories, seed oils, sugar, and convenience reshaped the way we eat.

I share my own AIP journey, practical shopping strategies, and simple meal ideas that prove real food doesn’t have to be complicated, bland, or expensive. We talk about the hidden loop that links processed food to chronic conditions—and the medications that often follow—then lay out small, doable steps to opt out: reading labels without obsessing, shopping the perimeter, choosing grass-fed and wild-caught when possible, and prioritizing organic for high-spray crops. We also tackle the bread question head-on, exploring what changed with wheat, why so many feel “gluten sensitive,” and how home milling and slow fermentation point back to a more nourishing pattern.

Beyond nutrition, we address the spiritual side of eating—gratitude, stewardship, and the quiet rebellion of choosing food that gives life. You’ll leave with reflection prompts, a calmer plan for your next grocery trip, and hope that every home-cooked meal is a step away from confusion and toward clarity. If this resonates, share it with someone you love, subscribe for more faith-and-health conversations, and leave a review to help others find the show.

Chapters

• 0:32 Welcome & Health Series Context
• 0:59 The Central Question: Is Food Making Us Sick?
• 4:07 Defining Real Food Through Scripture
• 6:25 Plants, Meat, and God’s Provision
• 12:13 How Our Diet Shifted Through History
• 19:15 Food, Disease, and the Pharma Loop
• 21:30 What Happened To Bread and Gluten
• 25:22 Practical Steps Back to Real Food
• 30:19 The Spiritual War Over What We Eat
• 32:46 Reflection, Resources, and Closing Blessing

Transcript

Rebecca Twomey: 0:32

Hello and welcome back to the Radiant Mission Podcast. My name is Rebecca Twomey, and I haven't said this for a while, but we are on a mission to encourage and inspire you as you are navigating through your life and with your relationship with Christ. Today we are continuing in our health series with one of the biggest lies ever sold, the food deception. If you joined last week, we talked about Tylenol and how our healthcare system profits from sickness instead of healing. So today, I'm asking an even deeper question. What if the food that we are eating is making us sick in the first place? Now let me be clear. This is not about guilt. This episode is not about guilting you in any way. I am not a perfect eater myself. I have not lived the cleanest food life, but I am now learning on my journey. And it's okay for us to learn and make mistakes. This episode is really focused on truth. And again, this is a biblical podcast. So that's the lens and the frame of this episode. Because God created our bodies and our food to work together perfectly. This is something that's very interesting to me and that I want to understand, just like birth. And I went through the whole thing. If you've been listening to this podcast, you know I've been through the ringer. I did birth the way that the world does birth. And then I studied birth the way that God designed our bodies. That's what we're doing here with food. And what I am discovering is that the enemy has taken what God has made good and twisted it. So if that seems interesting to you, some of the things that we're gonna unpack today are what real food really is. I mentioned that last time. Real food is something that even I had to learn what real food is. What does the Bible say about nourishment and what we should eat? The history of how our diet has changed over time. This is a huge thing that has been on my mind since I've been doing AIP is wow, people used to eat so differently. We have everything at our fingertips today, and that's not really how our bodies were necessarily designed. So that leads to then the connection between food and modern diseases and pharmaceuticals. And then there's a little subtopic here of food that I really want to talk about, and that's why even something as simple as bread has been corrupted. And then last, we're going to kind of circle back to how to start returning to God's design. Even in a fake food world, it can be done. So let's just get into it. Let's start with what is real food for the context of this discussion. Again, Bible-based, real food is food that God created, food that God made, not scientists and not corporations. God in Genesis 129, it says, Then God said, I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth, and every tree that has fruit with seed in it, they will be yours for food. So that's extremely interesting. Real food is alive and it comes from the soil that breathes, animals that roam, from water that flows, and plants that grow as he designed them. And if you think about it, we started in the garden eating all these beautiful, delicious foods from the garden. And when God made creation, he this is one of the things that really blows my mind. He made every nutrient with a purpose, every vitamin working in harmony with one another. The food that he gave us is full of enzymes, minerals, and fibers that our body instantly recognizes. But when food is created in a lab, when it is stripped, it's processed, it's sprayed, it's dyed, it's boxed, it confuses our bodies and it can make us really sick. Not to mention that these fruits and vegetables that the Lord created have also been corrupted, have been genetically modified, and are grown in situations where they're also sprayed with poison and then given to us. So it's crazy out there. And it's kind of like trying to run a car on perfume instead of gasoline. Like, all right, it smells nice, but you're not gonna get anywhere. You're not gonna get very far. Now, before we move on, I also want to address what the Bible says about meat because this is an interesting one. There are so many food accounts and diet accounts and health nutrition that come up that say eating plants is the best, don't eat meat. Or the reverse: only eat meat and don't eat plants. And again, this is about what we are told in the Bible. So let's talk about meat for a second. When God first created the world, he gave humans plants for food. And that was clear, as I mentioned in Genesis 1.29. Behold, I've given you every herb-bearing seed, every tree in which the fruit of the tree yielding seed, this is food for you. Okay. In the beginning, creation was perfect. There was no death, no decay, and there was no need for killing. Every nutrient the body needed was found in the abundance of what the earth was producing at that time. And our bodies were were working harmoniously with this. But then sin entered the world. In Genesis 3, God declared, cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil, you will eat food from it all the days of your life. And the fall really didn't just affect humanity's spirit, it also altered the world or the natural world as we might know it. And the interpretation here is that the soil became harder to work, plants became more difficult to cultivate, and the earth's environment began to change. And then something very interesting is that by the time of the flood, the world was completely different. In Genesis 7, it describes the fountains of the great deep bursting open and the windows of heaven pouring forth water, a cataclysmic event that reshaped the whole earth. So afterward in Genesis 8.22, it records God saying, While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter. And this is the first mention, first distinct mention. This is the first mention of distinct seasons. And many scholars believe that this first points to the start of climate variation and perhaps reduced vegetation in certain regions. And it's right after this that God extends his provision. So in Genesis 9, 3, it says, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. As I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. Now I want to be clear that this is not a contradiction to God's earlier design. It is an expansion of his mercy. The earth was no longer the same, and plant growth and available nutrients, you know, everything had changed. And now we're talking post-flood. Things are very different. So God essentially is providing a new form of sustenance to meet humanity's needs in this fallen post-flood world. So from that moment, meat became a God-given source of nourishment. Now later, God gave Israel specific dietary instructions in Leviticus to distinguish clean from unclean animals. And this wasn't a punishment, this was protection. Clean animals were generally herbivores that ate and filtered naturally, producing meat that was wholesome for the body. And when you look at modern nutrition, that makes perfect sense. Meat from animals that eat grass, grass-fed, and live freely, they are rich in essential amino acids, iron, zinc, and B12. And those are nutrients that complement what plants provide. And so think about wild caught fish as well. You know, this is a protection for us. So the Bible's picture of food is about balance and stewardship. God created both plants and animals to nourish his people. And the problem isn't meat itself, it's really what humanity has done to it. And the same thing can be applied to fruits and vegetables. So we've taken God's good design, we have corrupted it with industrial farming, with hormones, with antibiotics, with feedlots, and we've traded life-giving food for profit and convenience. If we really want to be truthful about this, God's design was very simple. Food should give us life, not take it away. So when we eat animals that are raised as he intended, eating the grass, seeing sunlight, and living in peace, we are still honoring his creation. But when we are eating from a system that abuses and manipulates life for gain, we are participating in the corruption of that design. This might sound a little wild to you, and you might be going, Well, I don't know how to eat like this, I can't afford to eat like this. You know, we are in a society where we function in similar ways to those people that are around us. And so if you think about groups of people that are farming, they're not going to operate the same way as a society that stops at McDonald's to get food or other fast food places. And so perhaps we just have to take on a different hat. And this is honestly what AIP did for me was allowed me to view it from that lens. And it got me thinking about how people must have eaten many years ago. And I don't want to go too far back, but this is something that I've been thinking about while doing AIP. I'm eating meat and I'm choosing to eat good meats, by the way. If I'm eating fish, it's I'm choosing wild caught, which is not easy to find. I've got a the whole whole, I've got to go to Whole Foods for that. And then I'm also eating good cuts of meat, of beef and whatnot, vegetables and fruits. And I gotta tell you, it's like people say, isn't that really boring? Isn't that bland? And it honestly is not because I have made it work for me. I prefer to have a smoothie in the morning, so I put a bunch of fruit in there. I use coconut yogurt and I juice some oranges, and then at lunch I have a salad, and I like to put a lot of stuff in my salad, so I have mixed lettuce, but I put a bunch of fruit in there and avocado and chicken. And something that I have thought about as I'm doing this is like if I was living hundreds of years ago, I would not be eating a salad that has grapes, strawberries, blueberries, cucumber, cilantro, all of these things, all of these fruits and vegetables. And then for dinner, having a variety of a meat of my choice, right? Like I could have anything. I live in 2025. I could have flé mignon, I could have chicken, I could have ground beef, I could have fish. If this was hundreds of years ago, I would have had to catch, well, the men would have caught or killed or whatever, whatever meat there was. The vegetables would be things that are local, you know, stuff like that. I was really thinking about this. So I want to kind of let's walk through this for a second. If we want to talk about 200 years ago, so we're talking 1800s, people were eating what they grew or traded at that time. Meals were seasonal. You know, you're not eating blueberries 12 months of the year, you're eating blueberries for a short period, or watermelon, or strawberries, or tomatoes, and bread was made with stone ground whole wheat. Milk was raw, sugar was very rare at that time, and it was expensive. So not everybody had sugar, and meals took time and community. There were certainly no drive-throughs, and there were no preservatives, and there were no preservatives, and there were really almost no chronic diseases. Now let's talk about 100 years ago, which is not that long ago. We're talking about 1920s to the 1930s. That is really when factories began producing food. They were producing white flour now, canned goods, and margarine. That was the new thing that came out. Processed sugar became really cheap and widespread at this point in time. And then people, they still cooked, but industrialization was beginning to creep into the kitchen. Now, 50 years ago, we're talking 1970s. Convenience became king. Now we're talking microwave dinners, seed oils, processed snacks replaced home cooked meals. Sugar has now found its way into everything, and low fat became the marketing lie of the century. Fat was now demonized, and chemical substitutes were what was being pushed in its place. I have talked a lot about the changes in food with my mom and my family and my grandma and stuff, and just how things have changed. And it's so, so interesting. My dad has this joke that he says, my mom was rich. Like he was like the rich, she was the rich girl because she had frozen dinners when they met. And you know, he had never had a frozen dinner. But then over the next 10 years, now frozen dinners were anybody, everybody could have them. And obviously he was joking, but they were really into frozen and canned, and like this was a new thing for them. And now, think about it. I mean, that's a dime a dozen. If you're gonna make something, you're grabbing canned food, you're grabbing frozen food, you're grabbing anything that's ready to go. Nowadays, we are eating fake food, and our great-grandparents would not recognize this. You know, they were still pulling stuff from the earth. Now, I did speak with my grandmother about this, who she has passed away. Um, she lived to into her 90s, and even she, in I'm talking like 30s, 40s growing up, was not really growing food. She was, you know, getting food from the store and all of that. So that's why I say great grandparents. We are now two generations removed from how food was is grown and the whole process. Now everything is within the food system. I say everything, but nearly everything. There are people farming, there are people growing things in their yards and on their farms, which is beautiful. But I'm kind of being a little bit more general with how I'm communicating about this. What is the result of this? The food system. Americans are heavier, sicker, and more medicated than ever before. But here's the truth that the system doesn't want you to see. Our food is making you sick, and then the same system with the same people involved, sell us the drugs to manage it. We eat processed, chemical-laden foods, our organs, our liver, pancreas, kidneys, our heart, they become overworked and inflamed by all of this. And then we're told we have high cholesterol and high blood pressure. And then instead of fixing the food or looking into our diet, we are given pills. And people are now on lifelong medications for issues that could often be reversed by simply eating the way that God designed. High cholesterol, for example, is the body producing extra because it's inflamed from seed oils. Diabetes, type 2 diabetes, is a reaction to sugar overload and insulin resistance. And then heart disease, it's often tied to processed fats, not the natural fats, the processed ones. And then we've got autoimmune disease. That's the gut being under constant assault from chemicals, dyes, gluten, all the above. And our organs were never built to handle all of this. The liver can detox. Thank God he created it that way, but not nonstop. And the pancreas can balance sugar, but not when every meal is dessert. Not when every meal has sugar in it. The gut can heal, but not when it is bombarded with daily chemicals. The American diet is essentially slow poison. That's it. It is slow poison. And then we are told to trust the same industry that made us sick to save us with pharmaceuticals. And it's the same deception, it's just wrapped in a prettier, crinkly, delicious, you know, package. Okay. So so far we have talked about fruits and vegetables and meat and gotten a little bit into the processed food stuff, but I also want to address gluten because this is a very fascinating topic. And I think that it's something that we don't talk about beyond the surface necessarily, because this is honestly, it's been pretty new for me, too. I think that when you don't think you suffer from a gluten issue, it doesn't become a topic of conversation that's interesting to most people, but I gotta tell you, it is interesting. So let's chat about it for a second. People love to say that everyone is suddenly allergic to bread, but it is not the bread, it is what we have done to the bread. God created wheat as a nourishing plant. Let's make that clear. It is rich in fiber, vitamins, and minerals. And for centuries, bread was the symbol of life and community. And in fact, Jesus called himself the bread of life. But the wheat that we are eating today is not the same wheat from the Bible. Modern wheat has been hybridized, it has been genetically altered to produce higher yields and stronger gluten content for industrial baking. So this means that it is denser, it's harder to digest, and it is often sprayed with glyphosate, which is an active ingredient in Roundup, right before harvest to dry it out faster. So when people say that they have gluten intolerance, what they are really reacting to is the chemical residue, the hybridization, and the destruction of the wheat's natural structure. And then, of course, on top of that, modern bread is made with bleached, stripped flour that has had all of its natural fiber and nutrients removed. And so to compensate, companies fortify, that's what they say, they fortify it with synthetic vitamins. And this is another man-made bandage on a self-inflicted wound. It is not that humans suddenly forgot how to eat bread, it's that the food has changed. Our food has changed. And something that I love seeing is all of these wonderful folks who are now milling their own wheat. And yes, you can get wheat berries. You can order them from Amazon. Not that I'm promoting Amazon right now, but just saying. And you can get them without glyphosate sprayed all over them. Mill them at home with your own mill. And boom, you now have a much closer to biblical wheat than you did when you bought that bag of flour. I myself am interested to go on this journey, but I am not eating any wheat right now. So I'm not quite there. But hopefully soon. If you do have questions about milling your own wheat, Rachel is a great resource, my sister. So send me a message. I would love to link you up with her. If you need anything, she has a mill, she mills her own stuff, she makes her own bread. And yeah, lots of folks are doing that now. All right. All of this said, how are we going to balance? How do we balance fake and real food? You know, this fake food is everywhere, literally everywhere. And it's hard to avoid it. It's way harder to eat real food than it is to eat fake food. So how are we going to live wisely? How do we do this without becoming overwhelmed? And you're in the right place because I would say that let's start with awareness. Read labels. If it has more than five ingredients, or it's words you can't pronounce, if it is not whole stuff, then it's probably fake. And if it has preservatives, look up what that what those preservatives are. How is it made? You know, what what is the significance? Another tip, and this is something I learned a long time ago, and I certainly this is how I'm shopping right now, is to shop the perimeter of the store. The real food is on the outside. It is the produce, meats, eggs, and dairy. The stuff that's in the middle, you're gonna find it's the processed stuff. The whole middle of the store is all processed. The outer ridge is where the better stuff is. And then this is something that took me a minute, and I had to really change my life to do this, but you've got to cook more at home. And I really resisted this because I felt like I didn't have the time. I was like, there's no way that I'm gonna have time to cook home, cook home cooked meals. I have four kids, I work a full-time job, I've got to keep up with all this, the house and all the stuff. I don't have time to cook. And that was when the drive-thru started coming in and the takeout and all that stuff. And I said, I don't have time. Let me tell you something. When you cook really simply, it actually takes less time than it would to get in the car and go get fast food or pick up takeout. Because if you're eating chicken, for example, if you're eating a simple meal, I'll give you an example of an AIP dinner for me. It would be a steak with a vegetable. So steak and broccoli, chicken and zucchini. How long does that really take to cook? If you put it in the air fryer, you don't even have to do anything. You just stick it in there, and 20 minutes later it's done. If I have zucchini, I put it in a pan and it takes a couple minutes to cook it. Or steak, you know, we're talking five, six minutes each side. So 12 minutes or so, 15 minutes, you have a meal. It is not that complicated. Now, my salad, yeah, they take a little bit to assemble, but you can batch some of the ingredients and then you know, get it together. It does not take as much time as we think it does. And I listen, I'm saying this as somebody who was on the other side, the other extreme, and now I'm making myself every single meal. I have only gone out to eat two times in the past two months, twice. That's it. Everything else I have made at home. So you can do it. You can do it. Because remember this that every meal you make from scratch is one less meal that the enemy system is profiting from. Boom. Next, buy organic when you can or when possible, especially for high spray crops like wheat or berries or leafy greens. You can actually do a search on this, you can ask Chat GBT, whatever you want. Like, what are the most important foods to eat organic? And check that out. And if you're thinking, like, I can't afford to eat organic, I can't afford to eat healthy food, it's too expensive. Let me tell you, we have saved money since we started eating healthier because we're not eating out. Eating out is expensive. Even to get fast food, it's 50 bucks, 40 bucks to go eat out, and it's not even good food, and you're hungry an hour later. But I actually have been just ordering from Whole Foods. Prior to this, we were grocery shopping at the regular grocery store and also eating out. We were spending twice or more, three times as much as we are now. And I'm getting healthy food, a bunch of stuff that's organic. So just saying, don't knock till you try it. You may try comparing this now. If you are eating in a budgeted way right now and you're not eating out, you don't Have a lot to take out, then yeah, maybe there might be some trade-offs here. But what is your health worth? Is your health worth an extra 20-50 bucks a week? It are there other things that you can give up because of that? Just a couple of thoughts. Okay, the next one that I wanted to share is praying before meals. Most of us do this, right? We pray before we eat, but you know, ask God to bless and purify what you're eating. And prayer really it can change the atmosphere, even over our imperfect food. Now, if you're eating, you know, your pizza and chicken nuggets and whatever, like Lord bless bless this food and give us some nutrients from it. I mean, miracles can happen, but definitely praying over our food is good. And then give yourself some grace. We cannot escape everything. We can't escape all the toxins. This world is crazy. We can't escape it all. So please do not get caught up in perfectionism when it comes to your eating or any of this stuff. Just remember that we can steward our choices and that God, He is looking at our hearts to learn about Him and to seek Him. And He's honoring that effort. The goal is not perfectionism, it is discernment. And so each step back towards real food is a step that you're taking closer to God. All right. That said, I want to take a quick minute to talk about the spiritual side of food. Okay. So Satan's first deception was in the garden and it was about food, right? He convinced Eve to eat what God said not to eat. And that deception, in my opinion, is continuing on today because the truth is when we nourish our bodies the way that God intended, we're honoring him. And when we choose what gives life instead of what destroys, we're waging spiritual war against a system that profits from our pain and our sickness. And if we want to tie this back to my favorite topic, the Nephilim, that they once shared forbidden knowledge and they manipulated God's design. And today that looks like GMOs. Lab grown meat, gross, synthetic vitamins, and chemical preservatives. And the goal is the same: corrupt creation and control humanity. But we're not helpless. We can resist and we can choose to walk in wisdom and we can say no, thank you, and we can opt out. All right. As we close up today, few reflection questions to think about this week as you are going through your week. What foods in my life bring life and which bring confusion or exhaustion? How has convenience replaced gratitude in the way that I eat? And what's one change that I can make this week to begin returning to God's design? So that said, thank you so much for joining me for this episode. I hope that you found this helpful or interesting. And if you did, be please share it with a friend or a loved one or someone that you know you want to have a conversation with about this topic. And if you want to follow along outside the podcast, you can do so on Instagram at the Radiant Mission, on Facebook at the Radiant Mission Podcast, and on YouTube by searching for my name, Rebecca Toomy. And my last name is spelled T-W-O-M-E-Y. I wonder if you guys like really remember that because I keep saying that every single episode. TWOMEY. Maybe I should come up with a song or something, a jingle. All right, today we're gonna close with 1 Corinthians 1031. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Wishing you a radiant week. I'll see you next time. Bye.