Clean (kosher?) vs. Unclean Meats

Dr. DeHaan's comment: I would like to explain that the recommendation of eating clean meats and avoiding unclean meats is not about religion. I do not practice Judaism. But there is a good reason for most of the principles outlined in the Bible and the principle of avoiding certain meats has complete reason and science behind it. Animals found on the unclean meat list either eat garbage, toxins and poisons, which becomes part of the meat structure you would eat, or they do not digest the food properly. It is good that there are animals like vultures that eat dead flesh and shrimp or catfish that eat the waste in the ocean. That is part of the cycle of nature. But the human body was not designed to deal with those poisons, it does not have the same processing organs. To eat of those meats is to invite all of those toxins and poisons into our body. And those, friends, are exactly what accumulate in our systems and become the sickness and diseases later in life.

Like I said, I am not a practicing Jew. I do my very best not to eat foods on the Unclean list, just because ingesting them is leading the body toward disease, not away from it. But all too often, religion takes biblical principles and turns them into law. This does not interest me, so I am not real concerned that a food be "kosher." If you are interested in the Jewish dietary laws or better yet the Biblical passages that explain what foods are to be eaten and what foods are to be avoided, you might look in the "details" section at http://www.jewfaq.org/kashrut.htm.

Biblically Clean Food List

MEAT: It must have a hoof and the hoof must be parted; it must chew its own cud. A cloven hoof is divided or split hoof. Animals that chew their cud are known as ruminants, whose stomach consists of four chambers. Food enters the rumen where digestion begins, then it passes to the reticulum, for more digestion and expulsion upward (chew it again). The food returns to a chamber called the omasum and finally to the abomasums where the cud passes into the duodenum and intestines. The process that occurs in the four stomachs allows ruminants to eliminate bacteria, toxins, parasites and other items that might become part of the flesh and eventually end up in the human body when it is consumed at the table. Overall it seems pretty wise that we don’t eat any animal that does not have four stomachs, lacking the ability to remove bacteria, virus, parasites, etc. Wouldn’t you say?

• Cattle
• Sheep
• Goat
• Deer
• Gazelle
• Roe deer
• Antelope

FISH: A fish must have fins and scales, whether in the seas or the rivers (fresh or salt water). Scales help the fish repel toxins in the water. They tend to be very picky eaters, rejecting dead foods, polluted or otherwise contaminated areas to feed in. The fat content described below is not something you need to be concerned with as far as the Bible describes; it is only listed in case you wish to eat meat of a particular fat content.

• Cod (*lower fat)
• Flounder*
• Haddock*
• Halibut*
• Perch*
• Pollack*
• Red snapper*
• Sea bass*
• Rainbow trout*
• Fin tuna*
• Bass (**average fat content)
• Bluefish**
• Mullet **
• Orange roughy**
• Bluefin tuna**
• Herring (***high fat content)
• Mackerel***
• Pompano***
• Salmon***
• Sardines***
• Etc.

NOTE: When you purchase your fish, choose the whole fish, unskinned if you can. You can ask the butcher to take the head off and debone it, but it is best if the fish is sold whole. Look at the eyes of the fish: they should be shiny, bright and bulging, firm and clear. The scales should be shiny. If you touch the fish and leave an indention in the meat, don’t eat it. The meat should be firm and bounce back. If the fish has a fishy smell, it is not fresh and is not recommended.

FOWL: Fowl must not be a meat-eating fowl. If a bird eats rats or snakes or other animals that are unclean to begin with, they will be ingesting the poisons and toxins contained in the meat of the animal they are eating. Examples of acceptable fowl include:

• Chicken
• Geese
• Turkey
• Ducks
• Doves
• Pigeons
• Patridge
• Quail
• Etc.

MISC.: These are also allowed and considered clean.

• Beetle
• Grasshopper
• Locust

Biblically Unclean Food List

MEAT: If it has no hoof; if the hoof is not parted; if it does not chew its own cud.

• Camels
• Rock badgers
• Rabbits
• Pigs
• Horse
• Etc

FISH: If fish do not have fins and scales (bony tubercles are not considered scales). Any fish without scales, especially the catfish, has a wonderful ability to absorb pollutants from the water. When oil spills, pollution, chemical waste and such are dumped into the water, many fish die. But how many of these have you seen dead on the sea shore? They absorb the toxins into their flesh.

• Swordfish
• Sturgeon
• Sharks
• Lumpfish
• European flatfish
• Catfish
• Sculpins
• Monkfish
• Etc.

SEAFOOD: All crustaceans and mollusk shellfish. Shellfish have a unique ability to purify water of pathogenic bacteria such as those found in raw sewage. Clams and oysters can filter up to fifty gallons of seawater a day. These creatures clean the seas of waste, but the waste becomes part of their flesh. Consider these the cockroaches of the sea. The Bible considers them not only unclean but an abomination!

• Crabs (crustaceans)
• Lobsters (crustaceans)
• Shrimp (crustaceans)
• Prawns (crustaceans)
• Crayfish (crustaceans)
• Clams (shellfish)
• Mussels (shellfish)
• Oysters (shellfish)
• Scallops (shellfish)
• Etc.

FOWL: Anything that eats dead meat is unclean, or birds of prey because there is no guarantee what they’ve eaten. Remember that anything an animal eats will became part of its flesh and eventually become a hazard to you if you end up eating that animal.

• Eagle
• Vulture
• Buzzard
• Kite
• Falcon
• Raven
• Ostrich
• Owl
• Vulture
• Haron
• Stork
• Hoopoe
• Bat
• Etc.

CREEPER: Any animal that creeps.

• Mole
• Mouse
• Lizard
• Gecko
• Reptile
• Chameleon
• Etc.

ADDITIONAL: Additionally, no animal is to be consumed if it was not slaughtered for food. This means you should not eat anything that died of a natural cause as it might be diseased. You are not to eat meat cooked in its mother’s milk. You are not to eat the blood, but drain off all the blood from the meat and eat no fat from the meat, but cut it off. This is what the Bible commands.

Not that it is allowable, but just as a note, the unhealthiest creatures on the face of the earth are human beings. They are the most toxic. I’m glad we are not on the food chain for anything else, or we would surely kill them!

Scientific studies have proven that each of the foods listed as unclean do have very toxic effects on the body (especially in accumulated amounts). Although many religious people do not see any harm in what is eaten believing that the Biblical principles are no longer valid, it seems that Bible and science have come together to show otherwise.

References for additional study

1. The Bible Cure by Reginald Cherry, M.D.
2. What Would Jesus Eat by Don Colbert, M.D.
3. Conscious Eating by Gabriel Cousens, M.D.
4. Why Christians Get Sick by George Malkmus.
5. The McDougal Program by John A. McDougal.

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