God has a sweet tooth — Hannah Viviers

I can see you cringe at my heading — or maybe you’re chuckling — either way it’s going to be a fun article … I hope.

A while ago I asked our editor here at Gateway News, Andre Viljoen, if I could write articles around the nutrition/health connection.

So here goes…

Healthy eating ‘research’ confusing
Working in the health arena I come across tons of information regarding health. There’s a lot of contradiction from various sources which can make healthy eating confusing.

There are plenty ‘research papers’ and ‘studies’ on nutrition so it’s hard to know what to follow.

I put research in inverted commas because we now know that a lot of what is called ‘research’ is paid-for propaganda by various interests. Meaning, the ‘findings’ of many ‘research’ papers are not real results but rather what the funders of those ‘studies’ want us to believe.

I shared this with Andre who said: “Research keeps changing. But the Word of God never changes.”

This was liberating.

Since then whenever I had a question about information on nutrition I would refer to Scripture to find out what God has said.

Which brings me to my heading about God having a sweet tooth.

Is it in our DNA?
The primary way many folks satisfy their sweet tooth is with sugary foods and drinks.

We know sugar is one of the leading triggers for weight gain, disease, sleeping disorders and all sorts of other dysfunctions in our body.

Many of us have heard of the highly addictive nature of sugar. We’re told sugar is even more addictive than cocaine.

Why is it that many people, (yes, even Christians), are addicted to sugar?

Why does this one taste have such a pull on us?

This question led me to wondering if perhaps our draw to sweet tastes was part of our design.

What the Bible says
I remembered Andre’s advice and started combing my mind for what I could remember in the Bible about ‘sweet’ tastes.

I giggled as the many references to ‘sweet’ in the Bible came to me.

Tickled by the many references, I came to the conclusion that surely God must have a sweet tooth!

Being created in His image, was it possible that our seemingly irresistible connection with sweet tastes had been downloaded to us from our Dad in Heaven?

We know from Genesis 1:29 that fruit was one of the primary foods God gave Adam and Eve to eat in the garden.

Most fruit as we know it is incredibly sweet.

When God described the Promised Land He had purposed to give the Children of Israel, He spoke of a land flowing with milk and honey — honey, there’s that sweet element again.

While they were in the wilderness, God fed His people manna from Heaven, which the Bible tells us: …was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey — Exodus 16:31.

Talk about sweet!

There are many other mentions of sweet in the Bible, but I’ll leave it there.

We can all relate
I don’t believe God would’ve given us so many naturally sweet foods if He Himself didn’t have a sweet tooth.

I believe that the “sweet-tooth” most of us have is a direct gene from our Father.

When we look at the various diets, Ketogenic, Paleo, Vegan, GAPS, Raw etc what they all have in common is the obvious love for sweet tastes.

We may disagree on different tastes but when it comes to sweet many of us can absolutely correlate the taste of sweet with a sense of good and pleasure.

What better way for God to describe some wonderfully pleasurable concepts in His Word than tapping into a sense most of us can fully relate to?

So what’s the problem?
The problem we have with having a sweet tooth comes when we consume unnatural or heavily processed sugars.

These are sugars that are either extracts from the real thing, (like sugar from sugar cane), or various other toxic sweeteners (like Aspartame) that are a far cry from what God intended for our bodies to consume.

It’s no wonder our bodies react negatively to these sugars.

For some people the negative reactions become so severe all kinds of disease are triggered — because these are sugars our bodies were not designed to process.

Through my work as a Health and Body Detox Coach, I repeatedly see people’s health significantly improve by cutting out nasty sugars, and replacing them with highly beneficial, naturally sweet foods such as raw organic honey, sweet potato (which is amazing for our good gut bacteria), apples which are a powerful detoxifier and so many other naturally sweet foods.

Sweet is good. But it has to be the right kind of sweet, in the right amounts.