cover image Good Eating

Good Eating

Stephen H. Webb. Brazos Press, $28 (272pp) ISBN 978-1-58743-015-2

The Prism Diet. The Hallelujah Diet. The Weigh Down Diet. These and other Christian diet strategies have been big news in recent years. But even if you despise the genre, don't dismiss Stephen Webb's Good Eating: The Bible, Diet, and the Proper Love of Animals before you've digested it fully. Webb makes cogent comments about American Christians' obsession with food (which he calls, quite rightly, an idol) and proposes a moderate diet of ""Christian vegetarianism"" to reflect the anticipated, perfect kingdom of God. Arguing that ""the unexamined meal is not worth eating,"" Webb draws on the Bible, the early church fathers and modern theology to demonstrate that Christians should think carefully about the consumption of animal flesh. It is, in all, a superb and meaty argument.