The BBC has a story about Don Colbert, a Florida doctor who believes that asking yourself "What would Jesus eat?" is the best way to stay fit, slim and trim. He's written a book of that title, and even managed to spin off a cook-book.

 

Personally, I'm a bit confused. We don't know too much about Jesus' diet; but we can probably safely assume that a fair bit of bread, fish and wine was involved. Yet there have been whole global movements dedicated to the dietary eradication of carbohydrates, and the government's currently asking us to think more seriously about our units. Hmmm... whom should we trust, God or government? My money's on Jesus - he made us, he's bound to know what works.

 

Plus, Jesus knew how to party. "Some of the stricter religious people have accused Jesus of being a wine bibber and a glutton because Jesus did like parties..." said Revd Dr Gordon Gatward, director of the Arthur Rank Centre, part of the Royal Agricultural Society of England. Well, he's my kind of God.

 

Jesus will have eaten a lot of bread and fish whether he liked it or not. There was a lot of it about - think of the left-overs after feeding the 5,000 (and the 4,000... and all their wives and children)! It does make you think... does the cookbook feature recipes such as '100 tasty ways with 6,457 guppies and 9,218 stale baps'? And I guess there was more in the way of beach braziers and hillside barbeques than filet de saumon en papillote or Gravad lax with a lingonberry coulis. We do know that fish is awfully good for you, unless it's full of mercury or hormones, but we can hope there was less pollution 1,978 years ago.

 

Dr Colbert points out that his fellow-physician Luke, in his own book (entitled Luke), chapter 24 verse 42, mentions a typical meal: "And they gave him [Jesus] a piece of a broiled fish, and of a honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them." I hope he shared.

 

Despite scant biblical records as to Jesus' eating habits, it's somewhat surprising that Dr Colbert has managed to pull together an entire book on his subject. Perhaps that's why he wanders into the Old Testament as well, looking at its dietary laws. But Dr Colbert does admit that food was probably scarce: "Many of them probably went hungry much of the time, or achieved only bare subsistence... I can't imagine many modern Americans taking enthusiastically to all the features of a biblical diet." (Talking himself out of a few sales, there, then.)

 

I wonder what's next - The John the Baptist Dinner Party Companion? "Locusts like you've never tasted them before."